Vignettes
by Aaron Cronin
Summary: Snapshots of the life of Tony and Virginia Stark, and their family and friends.  Movieverse, following up my previously published story "Hearts and Souls";  do check that one out first.
1. 21 April 2011: Veto Power

Vignette #1

21 April 2011 – Veto Power

Blanket disclaimer for this entire series: _Iron Man_, Tony, Pepper, Rhodey, JARVIS, Nick, Natalie, Steve, Jane, Thor, Bruce, Clint, Christine, Dummy, Butterfingers … did I forget anybody? Anyway, they and their ilk are all properties of Marvel Entertainment and either Paramount or Disney Studios, and I am deriving no income from their use. So keep the lawyers on a leash, _per favore_. All original characters are mine, but may be used by other writers if they ask (and give credit).

Extra author's note: these vignettes build upon my previous story "Hearts and Souls;" you may want to read it first, because things here might not make sense otherwise.

Okay, we all set? Time to get on with Tony and Pepper's lives, then …

* * *

><p>It was a quiet Thursday morning. Tony Stark was actually getting to like those. <em>Married life must be agreeing with me …<em>

He was plowing through a hefty breakfast of sausages, eggs, toast and grapefruit, while catching up on the latest news on his tablet PC. Across the table, Pepper continued her demolition of a big bowl of oatmeal with raisins. She'd been having oatmeal cravings throughout the pregnancy. Tony wondered if that was any indicator of what their child would be like. He vaguely recalled his mother talking about wanting lots of spicy Mexican food when she was carrying him. Of course, Mom was more or less Mexican, but …

Tony tabbed over to the sports news and the lead article caught his eye. "Hmmm … yeah … ah-hah! …"

"Care to share it with the class?" Pepper said with a smile.

"Sure – check this out." He passed the table over to her.

Pepper took it and read the indicated piece. As she did, her spoon slowed, then stopped, and her brow furrowed. Finally, she looked up. "Tony … no."

Tony attempted to look innocent. "No to what?"

Pepper gave him the who-do-you-think-you're-foolin' look. "Tony, I know what you're thinking when you see something like this. And the answer is no."

He gave up any pretense of confusion. "Now, c'mon! I don't think you get to decide unilaterally what I can and can't do …"

"… with _our_ money?" Pepper finished for him. They had drawn up an ironclad prenuptial agreement before the wedding, guaranteeing that should they divorce, Pepper would be quite comfortable even if she lived to be 200, but wouldn't have any control of Stark Industries. Still, they'd also agreed that for as long as they were together, major decisions should and would be made together.

"Okay, point taken. But it, it's a pillar of the community, and it's fallen on hard times. We'd be doing a public service!"

"You do enough public service between the company and the suit. You don't need this."

"Pep, you grew up around here, same as I did. You know what a big deal this is …"

"Yes, I do. But you don't have to take charge of every big deal." Pepper sighed and went on. "Tony, it's not like you don't have enough to do …"

"Nothing like this. That's business – this is, this is _fun_!"

"What, business isn't fun for you all of a sudden? Being Iron Man isn't fun? You sure fooled me." She said it with a smirk that could almost have been one of his.

"It's not the same. C'mon, this is what every American boy dreams of, right? It's what I dreamed of, I know that."

"Maybe so. And when I was a little girl I dreamed of becoming a ballerina. There's a time to set aside childhood dreams and start embracing the adult ones."

"Killjoy." Tony made sure to show that he was joking. Or half-joking.

"Tony … look at your life. You've got Stark Industries humming along. We're going into the airplane business, the automobile business. We're getting into medical with the Pegasus prosthetics. You just bought a helicopter manufacturer. Almost all your weekday time is spent cutting a deal or working on the next piece of new tech. Weekends and some nights, you're getting in the suit and causing evildoers headaches. Plus, you have a wife now, and a baby on the way? Your schedule is full – full of things you enjoy. You don't have the time to take on something like this."

Tony felt a little defensive. "I can make the time …"

"And where will the time come from? From SI? From Iron Man? From me and the little one?" That one stung, and he knew she saw it, but she didn't slow down. "I've known you for a long time, Tony. When you latch onto a new project, you tend to dive in to the exclusion of everything else. But there are too many people depending on you now to be there for them – you've said it yourself. They need you. _I_ need you. And we _don't_ need you immersing yourself in something that is this big and, no offense, this far outside your areas of expertise. I know you could learn – but we need you here with us, not off learning a new field. Or re-living boy's dreams."

Tony had one card left he could play – the "what a great thing for our kid" card – but he already knew it wouldn't fly. "Eh, I suppose you're right. I wish you weren't, but …" He returned to his now-lukewarm breakfast.

"I know you're disappointed," Pepper said sympathetically.

"No way I can sell you on it?"

Pepper shook her head, but smiled. "There is nothing in this world that will convince me that Tony Stark needs to buy the Los Angeles Dodgers."

Tony sighed, and began finishing off his breakfast.

"However …"

He looked up.

"… if someone else _comes to you_ and offers you a minority stake – _non_-managing, limited partner – we'll consider it. Okay?"

"Okay." A pause, then, "you're the best, Pep."

"Just doing my job," she replied with a smile, and returned to her oatmeal.


	2. 10 June 2011: Waiting for a Friend

Vignette #2

10 June 2011 – Waiting for a Friend

_Author's note: I realized only after posting the last chapter of "Hearts and Souls" that I'd failed to wrap up one of the supporting story lines, involving two minor characters. My bad. So I dropped a little something in here to cover that base – hope you don't mind …_

* * *

><p>"Sir?"<p>

Colonel James Rhodes looked up from his cell phone to see who was addressing him. "Yes, Lieutenant?" he replied tersely.

"Sorry to bother you, but …"

"Apology accepted, Lieutenant. Now is there something you need from me?"

"… um, no, sir, I …"

"Then feel free to go about your business, okay?"

"… um, yes, sir." The lieutenant, who'd just graduated from the Air Force Academy and arrived at Vandenberg AFB a couple of weeks before, made a slow but steady retreat.

Leaving Rhodey to pace and glare at his silent phone once again. _Do something, dammit!_

Technically, he was supposed to be overseeing infrared camera broadcasts from drone planes in the night sky over Afghanistan – that was why he was in the operations room, anyway. But he knew he'd barely been paying attention – his focus was shot to hell. He'd been rattled by that early-morning phone call, and eight hours later he was still waiting for further word …

And in the process, he was scaring hell out of the people working under him. With an effort of will, he forced himself to sit down, set the gadget aside and watching what everyone else was doing. It wasn't that interesting to him at the moment, but it did have the advantage of being his job.

"Sir?" It was the green lieutenant again.

Rhodey took a deep breath to calm himself, and made a point of reading the man's name badge before replying. "Yes, Mr. Kavigan?"

"Um … I was just wondering if you … if you needed anything … sir?"

Rhodey couldn't suppress a grin. He thought of his first encounter, less than a year previously, with another newly minted second lieut, Michael Lee Bragg. Bragg had thought he knew everything, and for a while was insistent on telling it to everyone else. It had taken a (reportedly epic) chewing out from Tony Stark to set the boy straight. But it did set him straight. Kavigan seemed to be coming from the opposite extreme; he wondered what steps he'd have to take to balance _this_ kid out.

One came to mind. "Lieutenant, there are a lot of things that don't get covered back in Colorado Springs. One of them is that if a superior officer wants something from you, he or she will ask you. No need to worry about it otherwise."

"Oh. Um, okay, sir."

"Now be a good boy and fuck off, all right?" Rhodey added with a smile.

"Uh, yes, sir." Kavigan moved to salute, thought better of it, and left.

Rhodey watched him go, and sighed. Thinking of Michael Lee Bragg had brought him full-circle. He'd last seen Tony just six days before, at Bragg and Dara Sanborn's wedding in Virginia. They didn't get much chance to talk – Tony was one of the groomsmen, while Rhodey's attention was mostly occupied (and quite an occupation it was!) by Adele Carey. But he had noticed that Tony had come to the ceremony alone. Turned out Pepper was on bed rest, doctor's orders, for the time being …

He looked at his phone again, picked it up, put it down, checked his watch – 3:06 in the afternoon – looked at the phone again. The watched pot stubbornly refused to boil. He glanced over his shoulder and saw Lieutenant Kavigan staring at him, then quickly (and guiltily) looking away. He turned back, musing on the old sergeants' saying that the most dangerous thing in the world was a second lieutenant with a map …

His cell phone buzzed, rattling against the tabletop. Rhodey picked it up before it had a chance to do it twice. Yes! A text coming in – and from Tony, sho' 'nuf …

He hit the "receive" button, saw the first line and let out a quiet "whoop!" And then, as he read on, his jaw dropped in shock …

IT'S A GIRL!

BORN 2:51 PM, 6/10/11 CEDARS SINAI

**JAMEY RHODA STARK**

7 LBS 15 OZ 21 INCHES

MOM & DAUGHTER DOING FINE

WANTED U TO B 1ST 2 KNOW PLATYPUS

FOR OBVIOUS REASONS

TONY

"Sir?"

Rhodey didn't know how long he'd been staring at the screen on his phone, but it had apparently been long enough to scare Lieutenant Kavigan.

"Sir … are you crying?"

He was, in fact – but had been too pleasantly stunned to do anything about it. "Thought I told you to get lost, Lieutenant," he replied hoarsely, without turning his head.

"Yes, sir," Kavigan said hastily and beat a retreat.

Rhodey kept staring at his phone, shaking his head in wonder, occasionally wiping away the telltale tears. _Jamey Rhoda_ … "Son-of-a-gun," he whispered to himself.


	3. Aug 2011: The Right Person for the Job

Vignette #3

12 August/22 August 2011 – The Right Person for the Job

_Author's note: this vignette is a crossover with another Marvel property. So be it._

* * *

><p>Nick Fury was there in the hallway, pacing, when Tony Stark opened the door and came out of the other room. "Well?"<p>

Tony made a face. "Let's go sit down someplace."

"I don't need you stalling …"

"I didn't say 'stall,' Nick, I said 'sit.' Totally different verb."

Nick shrugged, and together they walked down the hall to the workout room, where Tony landed on a weight bench, rested his elbows on his knees and sighed heavily.

Nick cocked his head to one side. "You sure you're all right?"

"Nothing a full night's sleep won't fix. The evening before I have a 4 a.m. flight out here from California, that's the evening Jamey gets colic." He shook his head and smiled wearily. "Should've named her Murphy."

"You could've let Pepper handle it. And why don't you have a nanny? You can afford it."

"I _did_ let Pepper handle it – after I left. And we had to cashier the nanny two days ago when we caught her stealing; we're still waiting on the agency for a new one."

Nick nodded. "My sympathies. But I didn't bring you all the way to Washington to hear about your parenting crises. What's your verdict on Rogers? Can you help?"

Tony took a moment before answering. "My verdict is that he's handling this about as well as anyone could be expected to. You basically transport a guy from 67 years ago, to where everyone he ever knew is either gone or close, to a completely different culture, and then screw up the transition just enough to send him running for the streets – no offense …"

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Nick replied irritably.

"… anyway, the guy's mind is going to get messed up a little. It's to his credit that he's not far more messed-up than he is. Given enough information and coaching, he'll be able to function at what passes for normal in 2011 without much problem. Certainly he'll be able to function as part of the Avengers."

"And can you give him the information and the coaching?"

Another deep breath. "Sorry, no."

Nick waited.

Tony did the same.

Nick blinked first. "That sounded like a refusal, Tony."

"In the literal sense, I suppose it is. Mostly, it's a recognition of my own limitations."

Nick almost laughed. "So you admit you have limitations!"

"Ha ha. Two problems with asking me to do what you want. One is that I don't have the time. You want Rogers brought up to speed by, say, the end of this year, you're going to need someone to spend several hours a day with him, almost every day, filling him in on what he needs to know, helping him set up the mental furniture. I've got a multi-billion-dollar business to run, I've got other projects I need to keep up with, and now I've got a wife, and a daughter with colic. I can't be camped out here in a bunker in Alexandria for the next several months walking this poor guy through the '50s."

Nick nodded, then asked, "and the other problem?"

"The other problem is that even if I did have the time to do the job, I'm not the person you'd want doing the job."

Nick motioned for him to go on.

"Look, you and I had our whole lives to pick up all the cultural markers, all the mores, all the reference points that we make sense of the world with. We got to deal with them one day at a time. But he doesn't have any of it. It's not just the obvious historical stuff – I could give him a high-school level rundown of major events from Omaha Beach to the present in a few hours, off the top of my head. But if he has to go out and live in that world we and our parents created, that poor kid is shafted! 'Cause U.S. History and World History are the least of his problems. It's the culture that he'll have to cope with – and he's two-thirds of a century behind."

"The culture?"

"Nick, think it through. Forget the Internet - he didn't have _television_ where he was from! He didn't have LP records, he didn't have microwave ovens, he didn't have transistors or the polio vaccine or the NBA or the space program or … or rock & roll! When he last checked in, _Glenn Miller_ was at the top of the charts – you throw Jay-Z and Kanye doing "H.A.M." at him and he's got no perspective to grasp it! How will he handle watching, um, _Black Swan_, when his most recent moviegoing experience was something like _Going My Way_? Does he even know the Dodgers aren't in Brooklyn anymore?"

Nick suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Yeah, we, uh … had to brief him on that. It's the only way we could keep him from running out to Ebbets Field to catch a game."

"Now _that_ is a fan. But more than anything else, that's the gap you'll have to fill in if you want to keep him from losing his mind. And for that, you need a pop culture _expert_ – not just someone who knows the basic history, but someone who knows the details, and how they fit together, and what were the consequences. And who knows them backward and forward. You need a specialist, a guru in that. And Nick … that's not my specialty. Engineering, I can do. Science, I can do. Weapons, I'd rather not, but I can do. The _Billboard_ charts or the Academy Awards … no, you need someone better than me."

"A pop culture guru …" Nick was surprised, but giving it some thought.

"Someone who knows the music, the films, the shows, the fads, the trends, and knows how to present it. Someone who's diplomatic enough to deal with somebody in full-on man-out-of-time mode." Tony snapped his fingers as another though occurred to him. "And female. The guru should be female."

"Okaaaay … and why is that?"

"Easy. What are the two biggest changes in American culture over the last seven decades? Not counting technological ones?"

"Race relations is one, obviously …"

"Obviously – but I get the sense he has a pretty good handle on that. He has no problem with taking orders from you. And if I recall, wasn't his team the first integrated unit in the U.S. Army?"

Now Nick was smiling and nodding. "That's what Poppa told me."

"So I … wait, what do you mean, Poppa told you?"

"My maternal grandfather. Gabe Jones – he was on Rogers' team."

Tony raised an eyebrow. "I did not know that."

"Listening to Poppa's stories was where I came up with the idea for the Avengers Initiative. And incidentally, there was a Japanese kid from Fresno on his team, too. But yeah, I agree – he shouldn't have much problem with the racial climate."

"Just wean him off using the term 'Negro' and yeah, he's good. It's the other change that'll be tough, and that's gender equality. I saw how he reacted when that nurse talked to him several minutes ago – he was shell-shocked. He's entered a world where Donna Reed lost the culture war and Rosie the Riveter won it, where women not only _can_ achieve anything a man can that doesn't involve heavy lifting or running a ten-second 100-meter dash, they _expect to_, and will get in your face if you try to deny them the opportunity. And according to you, he's probably never even had a steady girlfriend. How does he grasp Hillary Clinton as Secretary of State? For that matter, how does he deal with a very attractive – and very deadly – young lady on the same squad as him?"

"You mean Natasha."

"I mean Natasha. I mean Maria Hill. I mean Adele Carey, if I can ever convince you to give her a tryout …"

"I still want to give your Pegasus gadgets a few years to make sure they don't wear out on her …"

"… but my point is, having an intelligent, able woman working with him on a daily basis will ease that transition immensely. Especially if she's more patient and understanding than, say, you or I."

Nick chewed his lower lip for a few seconds. "Okay, I see the merits. So who do I need to get?"

Tony smirked. "I've, uh, got someone in mind. If she's interested, of course …"

* * *

><p>And that, I guess, is where I come in. Because that afternoon I get this weird phone call ...<p>

"Hello?"

"What was the top- rated TV program from the 1954-55 season?"

"_I Love Lucy_. What …?"

"Last Beatles song to reach #1 on the _Billboard_ charts?"

"Um, _The Long and Winding Road_. Look …"

"1968, Roy Scheider wins the Oscar for Best Actor for _In the Heat of the Night_. Who were the other four nominees?"

"Okay … Dustin Hoffman, Paul Newman, Spencer Tracy – posthumously – and … mmm, not Rex Harrison, not Finney, not Poitier … oh, Warren Beatty! Now, would …"

"In 1963, Betty Friedan put out _The Feminine Mystique_. Same year, Robert Heinlein …"

"… released _Podkayne of Mars_, which thanks to Friedan was outdated pretty much the day it hit the streets. Still one of Heinlein's best juveniles, despite that. And would you _mind_, Tony Stark, telling me _why_ we're playing Trivial Pursuit over the phone with _no advance warning?_"

"That was a test. You passed, just like I knew you would. And the government has a job for you, if you're interested."

"A job that involves knowing who won Best Actor forty-some years ago?" I was incredulous. Wouldn't you be?

But the answer was yes, among other things, and the money sounded good, and I was getting bored with my current job in Hollywood anyway, and was hoping to move back to the East Coast. (I was raised in Virginia, and I missed it almost every day I was in California. Or in Rhode Island, for that matter.) And Tony thought I might be able to get a book out of it if I played my cards right and the feds didn't decide to hit everything in the near vicinity with a "classified" stamp. So ten days later, here I was, on a four-month sabbatical from my regular gig, parking my rental car in the lot of a nondescript office building within spitting distance of the Pentagon.

However this job went, I had to admit as I smelled the clean air, there was one obvious benefit. It had carried me back to old Virginny …

Tony had only given me two pieces of advice when I accepted the job: "dress conservatively" and "don't put any moves on the guy." The first one made sense – a kid from 1944 wasn't going to be used to seeing a lot of leg or décolletage – so today I dressed in a beige business suit with the lowest hemline I had, along with a white blouse and a string of pearls. June Cleaver Enters the Work Force.

The second one, I initially found insulting; who was Tony Stark, of all people, to lecture someone else on their libido? But once I got Steve Rogers' dossier, I saw his point – they weren't entirely sure he'd ever been _kissed_. I was going to be teaching entertainment, culture and society to The 90-Year-Old Virgin. Which meant I would have to keep my (admittedly active) hormones in check, so I didn't blow the poor fellow away.

Oh well. I regret that I have but one chastity belt to wear for my country …

I was met in the lobby by a guy in a "Men in Black" suit who was a dead ringer for (of all people) Julia Louis-Dreyfus' husband from _The New Adventures of Old Christine_. He greeted me by name, introduced himself as Agent Phil Coulson, apologized for Nick Fury (the head honcho, and my direct report) being away on business, and asked if I wanted to meet "the subject." My immediate thought was that _somebody_ had read too much B.F. Skinner, but I let it go and said sure, why not. It'd be nice to meet Rogers informally, before we started the educational heavy lifting the next day. (And heavy lifting in more than one sense – I'd probably bought forty books and a hundred DVDs and CD-ROMs with me, to make sure I had all the bases covered.)

Coulson leads me to the elevator, and we drop three stories before exiting. That's kind of unusual around D.C. – since the metro area is built on a reclaimed swamp, it's not considered safe to build down too far. I asked Agent Coulson about the wisdom of the setup, but he just smiled wryly and replied, "we're part of the Department of Homeland Security, ma'am. Wisdom has nothing to do with it."

I'll never understand Beltway humor.

We walked down a hallway to a door with a window in it, on the other side of which appeared to be a small workout gym. "Shecky" Coulson excused himself, and I pushed the door open and went in …

… oh my.

Lying on a bench, dressed only in a pair of shorts, was what looked like the next stage of human evolution. Tall, beautiful face, wonderfully proportioned, muscles in places most men didn't have places and not an ounce of fat anywhere. Wow. I might just need a chastity belt, at that - one with a combination lock ...

It didn't help matters that he appeared to be bench-pressing about 450 pounds. Or is it still called "bench-pressing" if you're doing it one-handed?

I was pretty sure my face had returned to its normal color and my pupils had un-dilated by the time he replaced the bar and noticed me. "Can I help you, ma'am?"

_Keep your cool, girl!_ "Are you Captain Steve Rogers, United States Army?"

"Yes, ma'am." He threw a towel over his shoulder and walked up to me; I made sure to keep eye contact. "How can I help you?"

"Actually, it's the other way around. I'm your 'cultural acclimation tutor.'" I'll also never understand the Beltway fascination with bloated titles, but hey, when in Rome …

Rogers smiled shyly. He had a nice smile, too ... _focus, Po, focus_. "You're, uh, here to fill Rip van Winkle in on what happened while he was sleeping?"

"More or less." I smiled back and extended a hand for him to shake. "Christine Everhart, on leave from _Vanity Fair_ …"


	4. 17 September 2011: Side Meeting

Vignette #4

17 September 2011 – Side Meeting

_Author's note: well, we're finally caught up to the present day! Huzzah! Like the previous one, this vignette is a Marvel/Avengers-type crossover. After this, no more crossovers are planned – so enjoy it while it lasts …_

* * *

><p>Pepper had to admit – when Tony threw his weight around, he sure did it with style.<p>

Nick Fury had called just before the Labor Day weekend, wanting to set up an Avengers meeting in Washington, all hands, ASAP. (Apparently he had only been waiting until his new star pupil, Steve Rogers, had his wheels under him.) It took a bit of work, but Tony had talked him into holding it in Malibu – in his own home, in fact.

There were plenty of arguments in Malibu's favor. Natalie Rushman (who had chosen to take the pseudonym "Black Widow," how charming) was already in the area, as was Clint Barton – Hawkeye – who was training just down the highway in Venice Beach. Bruce Banner had finally been tracked down near Weaverville, California, so it would be easier to get him to L.A. than D.C. The same with the astrophysics team that had contacted Thor – yes, _that_ Thor, the Norse legend Thor! – which was based in New Mexico. The only ones that would need to fly out from Washington were Fury, Rogers and whatever staff Fury chose to haul along. Tony had offered to have all the meals catered and provide rooms "on-site" for everyone involved – heaven knows he had the money and the space to do so. And in southern California, unlike the mid-Atlantic region, it was _not_ hurricane season …

The real reason had been left unspoken: Tony, up to his ears in projects at Stark Industries, wanted to spend his free time with his wife and his three-month-old daughter Jamey, not flying unnecessarily to the East Coast and back – probably without them. And if the meeting was going to be in the D.C. area, there was a good chance _he_ wouldn't be.

Thankfully, that possibility had been avoided. It was the best news Pepper had received since she'd found out Christine Everhart had been banished to the other end of the country. Well, nobody involved thought of it as a banishment, but that's how she liked to imagine it. (Extra good news: Everhart wasn't at this meeting, either, even though she was technically a S.H.I.E.L.D. consultant now. According to Agent Coulson, she was taking the weekend off, visiting relatives in Richmond or someplace ...)

So, all to the good. The S.H.I.E.L.D. meetings were able to double as a bonding experience – and considering how many of the people involved probably had "doesn't play well with others" written on their grade-school report cards, that was a definite plus. She had Tony at home to help take care of Jamey. He had her around for when he needed organizational assistance. And the government avoided spending money that it didn't have in the first place. The only negative had come that morning, when she'd wandered into the kitchen at 3 a.m. in her bathrobe to warm up a bottle for Jamey, and almost jumped out of her skin to find the big Swedish guy who was head of the "Thor team" sitting in the dark drinking coffee. (He hadn't turned on the light because "I didn't want to disturb anyone." Yeah ...) And even _that_ had had a silver lining: since he'd made enough coffee for the rest of the group too, that knocked one task off her morning to-do list.

Right now, in the middle of Saturday afternoon, it was quiet. The caterers had cleaned up the detritus from lunch and were back at their home base constructing dinner (pot roast, she'd heard mentioned) for later delivery. The conference participants were locked away in the converted guest bedroom that served as their meeting room. And Pepper, have concluded a dramatic reading of _Go, Dog, Go!_ in the sunken living room, was catching up on the news on her laptop while Jamey drowsed in her baby carrier.

She'd just finished skimming the latest update on the Reno air-show crash when she heard footsteps behind her. She turned around, expecting from the sound of the heels that it was Natalie coming to let her know there was a break in the action, or that Tony needed her help.

"Oh! I'm sorry – I didn't realize someone else was in here. I can … go somewhere else …"

It wasn't Natalie. It was that tiny girl from the "Thor team," the one she'd thought was the big Swede's daughter until Phil Coulson had set her straight. Foster, that was her name. "No, it's okay – come on in. But you may want to keep your voice down." She indicated the baby carrier and its sleeping occupant.

"Ohh, okay," Foster said, in a near-whisper this time. Eager to please. Or maybe just nervous among the high-powered company.

Pepper couldn't blame her for that. She remembered her first year as Tony's personal assistant, when it seemed like the route to his office was carpeted with senators, generals, CEOs, and Emmy-Award-winning actresses. After a while, she got used to it. "Are you guys taking a breather right now?"

Foster – Jane, that was her first name – rolled her eyes. "I wish. They just don't need me in there right now – Erik's representing our end. And the testosterone level was getting a bit high, so I ducked out for some fresh air." She smiled puckishly.

Pepper almost burst out laughing. "I understand completely – I've worked with most of the people involved. Their egos do tend to fill up the available space."

Jane nodded. "Erik and I are the noobs here – we're still trying to figure out the lay of the land." She sighed and rubbed her temples. "Part of me wishes I was doing my doctorate in poli. sci. instead of astrophysics – I've have a better idea of how to handle everyone's maneuvers."

"It's not that hard, really. Just think of them as factions – the libertarians, the centralists and the moderates."

Jane furrowed her brow. "Not sure I follow."

"Okay. The centralists are the ones who want everything under strict hierarchical control – Nick Fury says 'frog,' everyone jumps. That's pretty much the S.H.I.E.L.D. main office personnel – Nick, of course, plus Phil Coulson and Maria Hill."

"Makes sense. And the libertarians?"

"The libertarians want more operational independence, fewer dictates from the top. Tony's the 'leader' of that group, if you could say that it's being led at all. Bruce Banner's with him, and Clint Barton, though Barton is a S.H.I.E.L.D. employee. He's just naturally a renegade."

"Among other things," Jane grumbled. "I swear, the only time he wasn't trying to flirt with me was when he was trying to flirt with … Natalie? Natasha? What_ is_ her real name, anyway?"

Pepper smiled knowingly. "She was born Natasha Romanova, but her parents emigrated to the U.S. when she was still a toddler. She still goes by Natasha within S.H.I.E.L.D., but her public persona is Natalie Rushman – that's what she uses at Stark Industries, and except for government I.D. all her cards say 'Natalie'." She knew that firsthand – last month, Natalie had earned a substantial bonus from SI for clever thinking during some touchy negotiations with Hammer Industries. She'd called Pepper, wanting to celebrate, and the two of them had spent a Saturday morning cutting a small but noticeable swath through the stores on Rodeo Drive. Her Visa card had read "NATALIE I RUSHMAN," so that settled that.

"I'm confused – does Natalie-Natasha Whatever work for Tony or for Nick?"

"Both. She's been with S.H.I.E.L.D. for years, and originally was a S.H.I.E.L.D. plant inside SI, specifically to keep tabs on Tony. But she ended up doing such a good job for Tony that he kept her on as his new personal assistant, so now she pulls two paychecks." Plus occasional bonuses. "She started out as a centralist, as you might expect, but because of her connection to both sides, she's become a moderate."

"Her and Rogers."

"Precisely – they're the balancers, the heart of any coalition. Although Natalie's in the middle because she sees the benefits of both sides, while I think Rogers is in the middle because he doesn't quite _trust_ either side. And because he's a natural team-builder."

"Okay, I think I get it now. Hmmm … that could make it interesting for us. Erik, I think leans toward Nick and the centralists, although he's an old hand at infighting from being at Harvard for a couple decades. Me, I'd tend to the libertarian side if I wasn't uneasy about being on the same team as Clint Barton. It's like I'm working with Don Draper, only he doesn't realize it's not 1963 anymore."

"Yeah, Clint is like that. He doesn't mean any harm, he's just …"

"A horndog?"

"Kind of. A horndog without any real direction, I'd say. I had some problems with him too, until Tony and I got engaged, then he backed way off. That's the best Clint-repellent, really – he won't bother you if you're clearly spoken for. I've told Natalie to have her boyfriend stop by the D.C. office sometime when she and Clint are both there - that should give him the hint."

"Oh. Who's her boyfriend?"

"Brian's a professor at Howard University. But before that, he was a _defensive tackle_ at Howard University. He's about, oh, six-five, 270 …"

"Oooooh," Jane replied gleefully, but then turned sober and sighed again. "Easier said than done for me."

"How so?" Pepper asked, then filled in the blanks for herself. "The thunder god?"

Jane nodded sadly. "I miss him."

Pepper nodded sympathetically. "Does he feel the same way?"

"I think so. He said he would, that he'd return for me. But … well, he's several star systems away now. And I have no way of knowing if he'll ever come back."

"Jane, trust me. If he feels the same way, he'll come back."

"You sure?"

Just then, Jamey woke up and began crying. Pepper picked her up, showing off the baby's head of thick, Tony-Stark-like dark hair. "I'm not just sure. I have proof."

"Oh. Yeah," Jane said, getting the hint. "How … how long did you have to wait for him?"

Pepper shook her head, smiling. "I didn't. _He_ had to wait for _me_. And … about twelve years."

"Wow. He must have really wanted you."

"Must have. Oh, I see what you want, Jamey!" It wasn't hard to deduce, as Jamey was batting her face against Pepper's chest. Pepper began to unbutton her blouse. "You don't mind if …?"

"No, that's okay. Thank you for the pep talk … um, no pun intended." Jane stood up. "I think I'll call Darcy and see how things are at the lab, then head back to the meeting. Thanks again." She stepped out, giving mother and child their privacy.

As Jamey chowed down, Pepper sighed. She remembered being that young once – nervous, more than a little naive, but still smart and steely enough to stand up to a charming but overbearing man with a hero complex. She'd managed to survive the experience, get the guy – well, let the guy get _her_ – and even ground him a little.

Down the hallway, she heard Jane Foster mutter something about "damn interference," then click her phone shut and walk away, probably toward the meeting room.

Pepper nodded to herself. Yes, Jane Foster would likely be fine. Provided Thunder Boy took care of things on his end …

* * *

><p>At the same time, in a trailer in the high desert south of Santa Fe, New Mexico, Darcy Lewis muttered something about "damn interference," then gave up trying to reach Jane and just watched the lightning storm beginning to brew overhead …<p> 


	5. 9 November 2012: How They Met

Vignette #5

9 November 2012 – How They Met

* * *

><p>"Mommy! Daddyyy!"<p>

The four adults in the living room paused as just over two feet of pure energy in bright red footie pajamas came barreling in, rounded the end of the sectional and swarmed up into Pepper's lap.

"Good night, Jamey," Pepper said in return and kissed her daughter on the cheek.

Jamey barely paused before jumping into Tony's lap and grabbing his nose, hard. "Gotchanose!"

"He'p. He'p," Tony replied with a smile, which made Jamey giggle as it always did.

She let go, got a kiss on the other cheek, then yelled, "G'ni-i-ight!" to all and sundry before running back to Rupert, the Starks' nanny, who had ushered her in to pay her respects for the evening. She hugged him around the shins, then off like a shot toward her room.

"She's a cutie," Rhodey said with admiration.

"Yeah. She's worked out so well, we're thinking of keeping her on," Tony replied dryly as he attempted to return his nose to its original shape.

"Anything else once I get her settled, Mr. Stark?" Rupert asked. He was a young man, pushing thirty, who looked older due to prematurely graying hair but was still healthy enough to keep up with the pint-sized dynamo in his charge.

"Nah, we're good for tonight. Have a good evening – see ya Monday."

"Thanks!" Rupert headed out to tuck Jamey in bed.

"A male _au pair_ – that's rather unusual," Adele Carey-Rhodes remarked after he left.

"It's kind of a funny story," Tony replied.

"Not _that_ funny," Pepper added archly. "The first nanny, we caught her stealing and sent her back to the agency. The second one made a pass at Tony, then tried to convince me it was the other way around …"

"Not knowing I had texted Pep about the whole thing as soon as it happened," Tony added.

"… and then tried to make a pass at _me_. The agency said to not even bother sending _her_ back, she was history. Third try, they sent Rupert, who had grown up wanting to be a Catholic monk and teach at a parochial school …"

"… only to realize a year into his novitiate that he was gay …"

"… and decide to pursue a different path. He has been terrific – reliable, caring, fun, and Jamey just adores him."

"We lucked out," Tony said in summation. "As did the agency, because three strikes and they would've been out." Pepper nodded in affirmation at that.

Adele laughed. "That is so perfect! I confess, I'm partial to 'how we met' stories – of any kind."

"Yeah, you two have a doozy, don't you?" Tony said around a smirk and a sip of Laphroaig.

Rhodey grinned widely. "Oh yeah …"

"So how did you two meet?" Adele asked, pointing at Tony and Pepper with one of the fingers that wasn't holding her Tanqueray and tonic.

Tony looked at Rhodey, surprised. "You haven't told her?"

A shrug. "Never came up, I guess …"

"C'mon, Platypus – you're letting the side down here …"

"So am I going to find out or not?" Adele asked, playfully elbowing Rhodey as she did.

"Okay, okay," Pepper jumped in before Tony could. "Peabody, set the Wayback Machine for … 1996. I'm not that far removed from Stanford, the ink still wet on my business degree, and I'm in the accounting pool at Stark Industries via a placement agency. SI is in the middle of this big negotiation with National Semiconductor to buy computer chips for the next generation of stuff-to-blow-up-bad-guys-with. The final contract is insanely complicated, there are a ton of figures to calculate. And being the new girl in the office, I get all the scut jobs, so I have this one dumped on my desk.

"Well, I _am_ new, I want to impress the brass and hopefully get on permanently, so I throw myself into this contract. And I find a typo. Just two numbers transposed, but the result could be millions per year owed over what SI should be paying. So I take it to my supervisor … and he blows me off, says it's nothing, don't worry about it. I take it back to my desk, thinking okay, I guess I overreacted. But I check the numbers again, and no, there _is_ a typo, and it _will_ cost the company major bucks. I really don't have the option of going to my supervisor again; he made that very clear. But if I go over his head, I could be in even bigger trouble. So what do I do?

"I figured, if I was wrong – and I knew I wasn't – I was toast anyway. And the way the supervisor had treated me, I was a little angry. Anyway, I decided to just avoid the middleman and take it straight to the top – literally. I took the elevator to the tenth floor and made a beeline for the office of Tony Stark, hoping like heck that he had an open-door policy."

"Which I didn't, in fact," Tony chipped in. "A Cold War holdover from my father's days."

"Well, that and you couldn't really have one when you often had a starlet hiding under your desk."

"Now, hey, that's … actually, okay, that was totally called for. Go on with the story."

"Right. And speaking of Cold War holdovers, there's a security guard standing in front of the door to Tony's suite. I tell him I need to see the Big Guy, he tells me to take a hike, I insist, he insists, I tell him it's urgent, he tells me to tell my supe about it and stop wasting his time. I try to go around him at that point – I'm steaming, and I figure I might as well be shot for a sheep as a goat. Rent-a-Cop grabs my arm, none too gently, and I tell him he'd better let go of me or he was going to get a face full of pepper spray; I already had my hand in my pocket."

Adele's brow furrowed. "Why would you be carrying pepper spray in your pocket?"

"I was 23, single and living in Los Angeles."

"Point taken."

"Meanwhile," Tony took over, "I'm hearing this commotion through _two_ closed doors. I go to investigate, as does Rose Forrest, who was my personal assistant at the time. I ask what's all the noise about, and this young lady hands me a page from the soon-to-be-signed National Semi contract, explaining – when she can catch her breath – about the typo. Rose looks it over, and turns this remarkable shade of pink. I take that as my cue, tell the security thug to unhand the lady, have her wait with Rose in the anteroom, and I call our CFO to find out if he's seen this. Obie stops by while I'm doing that – Obadiah Stane, my dad's old partner and still COO at the time. He looks it over and almost freaks out. Together, we call National Semi, and no, they weren't trying to pull a fast one on us, it was an honest mistake. We get it corrected, and to date, that's saved us over $100 million.

"Needless to say, the new girl in accounting had our attention – for reasons aside from the pepper spray and how well she filled out a business suit. Rose was nearing retirement, and we'd been on the lookout for a replacement. By the time I got back to Rose's desk to thank Whatserface –" He jerked a thumb at Pepper. "– the two ladies were thick as thieves. So that day, Pepper got a promotion, as well as her enduring nickname."

"And the accounting manager?" Rhodey prompted.

"He'd already been given a couple of warnings, so he was up in my office within an hour … and out on the street within two."

Adele could barely contain her laughter. "That's one to tell the kids when they're old enough!"

Tony shrugged. "Heck, that's nothing compared to how my parents met."

Pepper turned to look at him. "Wait, _I_ haven't heard this one. How _did_ your parents meet?"

"Oh, Dad fell down a flight of stairs."

Several seconds of silence were followed by Rhodey saying "Whaaa?"

Tony smirked in anticipation. "1963. Dad is in his mid-'40s, darling of the military-industrial complex, Stark Industries is going great guns – pun intended – but he's feeling a little stale. So he accepts an invitation from Cal Tech to teach a graduate-level physics seminar. Now, Dad was very smooth with most people, but he wasn't always … aware of his physical surroundings? Too focused, sometimes. One day near the end of the fall term, he's walking on the second floor of one of the school buildings with a fellow professor, discussing some new discovery in atomic nuclei or whatever. He doesn't realize they've gotten to the top of a stairway until his foot is already off the top step …" He paused.

"… and he fell down the flight of stairs," Adele finished for him.

"And dislocated his elbow trying to stop his fall. So his colleagues hustle him over to the campus medical center, and who should be the first person to see him but Maria Vasquez, newly minted RN out of Pasadena Junior College. She stabilizes his arm, does the usual tests, and then notices he's staring at her with this really fixed expression. She worries that he's got a concussion or is going into shock, and starts asking him more questions. And he says – and this is a quote, according to Mom – 'no, my head is fine, it's just that you're the most stunningly beautiful girl I've ever seen in my life, and I can't take my eyes off you.'"

Everyone else burst into laughter. "He said that?" Pepper asked incredulously.

"Wait, I thought he was smooth!" Rhodey added.

"He was, by all accounts – except this one time. You have to understand, Dad had been one of L.A. most-eligible bachelors for two decades. He'd been with a lot of pretty girls. But this one had him totally … I was about to say 'disarmed,' but the puns are beginning to pile up. Anyway, he was just blown away, to the point that he even forgot to get her number. He had to come back the next day to ask her out. But the rest is history."

"She must have been quite a bit younger than him," Adele wondered.

"About twenty years. Funny thing – he actually knew _her dad_ from Cal Tech."

"He was a professor there?"

"Eh, no – janitor. Back in '63, if your name was Vasquez and you lived in southern California, you usually didn't get to be a professor." He shrugged as if to say, _thank heavens the past is the past._

Pepper was still chuckling. "That's not bad – but I think the way my parents got together was even funnier. My adoptive parents, I mean; I have no idea if my biological parents were even introduced."

Adele looked at Tony, who shook his head to indicate the "biological parents" angle was better left undiscussed, then asked, "so how _did_ they meet?"

"All right, this took place in 1966, on the set of the movie _The War Wagon_ …"

Immediately, Tony and Rhodey both started waxing poetic about the John Wayne/Kirk Douglas western, and it took Pepper a moment to get them back on track.

"C'mon, who's telling this story? Orville Potts was one of the cameramen, which was a bear of a job considering they were doing most of the filming outdoors, in the summer, with live animals. There was one particular scene where they'd had to do take after take because the horses were getting skittish. It's a hundred degrees in the shade, and everyone's on edge. Orville asks the nearest animal trainer, probably not gently enough, if she could settle the beasts down. And she – Annette Opperman – loses it."

"Seriously?" Tony asked.

"_Very_ seriously. Mom could really let you have it if you made her mad. She started cussing Dad out, up one side of the arroyo and down the other, mostly about how he and his mates were spooking them by moving all that heavy equipment around, but with occasional references to his ancestry and personal tastes. Well, you did _not_ cuss Orville Potts out in public. He started firing back in equal measure, and they went at it hammer and tongs for something like ten minutes. Burt Kennedy, the _director_, had to come out and break up the argument!

"Oddly enough, the blow-up seemed to drain all the tension off for the whole crew – even the horses settled down – and they got the next few scenes shot bang-bang-bang after that. Meanwhile, Orville and Annette are both feeling bad at how unprofessionally they acted, and once shooting wrapped for the day they sought each other out to make amends. They ended up going out to dinner that night … and the next night … and the next … and at the wrap party –"

"He proposed?" Rhodey wondered.

Pepper grinned. "_She_ proposed. And according to a reliable witness, he said, 'well, I may be a fool, but I'm not a big enough fool to say no!' They got hitched two weeks later by a justice of the peace, and they stayed together – occasional shouting matches notwithstanding – until Dad died in '92."

"I can't believe it," Adele said, shaking her head.

"I can't believe your parents told you about it!" Rhodey added.

"Oh, _they_ didn't," Pepper replied archly as Tony suppressed a snort. She sat back, smiled up at the ceiling. "Kirk spilled the beans on them."

That got their eyes bulging. "_Kirk Douglas_ told you how your parents met?" Rhodey almost shrieked.

Pepper was grinning like the Cheshire cat. "Well, I was fifteen by then – it was cool," she drawled nonchalantly.

"Some time, Platypus, I'm going to have her haul out her photo collection so you can see it," Tony told his friend. "Her parents knew half of Old Hollywood – and had them over for dinner. There's her sitting on Natalie Wood's lap … her playing Candy Land with Jimmy Stewart … her getting a piggyback ride from Ray Milland …"

"Tony, stop, you're embarrassing me."

"Oh, so I don't get to talk about _your_ family photos, but you get to show off the picture of me as a baby being held by LBJ? I'm calling double standard!"

"Okay, okay, truce. So, James, how did your parents meet?" Pepper said to change the subject.

Suddenly Rhodey looked bashful. "Uh … naw, naw."

"Aw, come on!" Tony bellowed.

"Nah, seriously, I don't … you –" He pointed at Tony. "– you will give me grief about this, I know you will."

Tony held up his hand, three fingers up, thumb touching his pinky. "Scout's honor, Platypus. I won't laugh, I promise."

"Oh, tell us, Jim," Adele nudged. "How bad could it possibly be?"

"All right, all right, all right." Rhodey looked up at the ceiling and took a deep breath, as if he were steeling himself before jumping out of a plane. "Family reunion."

Three seconds of silence ensued, before Pepper, of all people, burst into laughter. Adele was staring at Rhodey in shock: "You're joking. You're not joking. Dear God …" And Tony was keeping his vow, though it meant locking a hand over his mouth.

"You see?" Rhodey gestured over at Pepper. "This … this is why I don't tell people!"

Tears were rolling down Pepper's face, she was laughing so hard. "I'm sorry, James, I'm sorry …," she managed to blubber before dissolving into guffaws again.

"Now, Pep," Tony said, laying his hand on her shoulder. "I'm sure there's a perfectly valid explanation for this …"

Pepper began to contain herself.

"… that doesn't involved the song 'Dueling Banjos' …"

Pepper lost it again. And now Adele was chuckling.

"Tony!" Rhodey objected.

Tony raised his hands in surrender. "I didn't laugh! I _did not laugh_!"

Rhodey sighed and rested his forehead in his hand. "With friends like these. Damn." But he was smiling – albeit ruefully.

"Look, Jim, just explain it to us," Adele said, putting an arm around his shoulder as Pepper tried once again to get it together.

"All right." Rhodey rolled his eyes and shook his head. "Now, what you gotta understand is that there are the Philadelphia Rhodeses, and the Pittsburgh Rhodeses, and then there are the Cookeville, Tennessee Rhodeses. Early part of the 20th century, about half the Cookeville Rhodeses fled north looking for work, and ended up in Pennsylvania. And they were not about to go back to the South, for obvious reasons. But they still kept in touch with their kinfolk. And about every other year, the Cookeville Rhodeses would get in a big bus or two and flee Jim Crow for a weekend up in Philly or Pittsburgh, and all three branches of the family would gather for a big two-day picnic.

Now, in '59 the party was in South Philly – my grandfather Josiah Rhodes had connections, and he'd gotten a permit to use a city park and everything. There was some big-time cooking going on, and Josiah's son, my Uncle Alexander, was running some game about how he made the best barbecue in the family. Simeon Peter Rhodes, from the Cookeville branch, got an earful of this and challenged Alexander to a cook-off, with the patriarchs of all three groups to judge. They broke out their best rubs and sauces and grilling techniques and trash-talk …"

"All that for barbecue?" Pepper asked.

"Serious business in the South," Tony responded.

"See, _he_ understands! In the end, the judges agreed that Simeon Peter … had whipped Alexander's tail. But the old men weren't the only ones impressed – there was also Wilhelmina and Phoebe Rogers, Alexander's older and younger sisters, who owned a pretty good soul food restaurant in South Philly and a pretty big grudge against Alexander for all his gum-flapping. Right then and there, they offered Simeon Peter a job in their place if he was inclined to leave Tennessee. If you know anything about Tennessee in the '50s, that was an easy decision – he asked his folks to pack his stuff when they got home and mail it north! Wilhelmina was already married, but Phoebe was available, and once they figured out they weren't _too_ related – third cousins – that was all she wrote. And not only did they celebrate their fifty-second anniversary this year, but the restaurant is still open – my brother John runs it now, still using Pop's recipes."

"Which are great recipes – I can vouch," Tony said with an enthusiastic nod. "Next time we're on the East Coast, Pep, we'll detour up to Philadelphia and get you a taste of the best barbecue you'll ever have."

"Wait, you knew about all this?" Pepper swatted Tony on the arm.

"I knew about the barbecue part. Not the third-cousin part. You know, Platypus, the second you said 'family reunion,' you made it sound a lot worse than it was. Next time, just tell people about the contest; you can skip over the family stuff later."

"I'll keep that in mind. And I'll pass your compliments back to Pop and John." He turned to Adele. "So how about you, sweetie? What's your parents' story?"

Adele shrugged. "Semi-arranged marriage. Let's face it, there weren't that many Kikuyu in Birmingham, England in the '60s and '70s. If two families got along, and one had a son while another had a daughter about the same age, they'd throw 'em together and see what occurred. That's what happened with my mum and dad." Another shrug.

Tony looked at Pepper, then back at Rhodey and Adele. "Boooooo-riiiiiing." They all laughed, including Adele, and he continued. "I think Pepper wins this one. None of us can beat _The War Wagon_."

"As told by Kirk Douglas," Rhodey added.

"Great! What's my prize?" Pepper asked enthusiastically.

"How about some ribs from Jim's father's restaurant?" Adele volunteered.

"You're giving away my Pop's barbecue? What is with you, woman?" Rhodey declaimed in mock-seriousness. And everyone laughed again …


	6. 12 January 2013: Raining Soup

Vignette #6

12 January 2013 – Raining Soup

* * *

><p>The last thing Pepper had expected Tony to say that Saturday morning was "let's go for a drive."<p>

They, and their 19-month-old daughter Jamey, had just spent the previous four days in Las Vegas. Tony had given the opening keynote address at the annual Consumer Electronics Show, followed by several days of schmoozing other wheeler-dealers and promoting (with notable success) two of Stark Industries' upcoming products, the FutureDesk tablet computer and FuturePhone PDA. Pepper helped where she could, but she was mostly letting Natalie keep him straight while she did some networking of her own for SI, a little shopping, and showed Jamey the sights.

Friday evening, the convention had wrapped up, Natalie had hopped a late flight to D.C. to mend S.H.I.E.L.D.-related fences, and Tony and Pepper had taken advantage of their nanny Rupert's presence to crash earlier than usual. When the room-service breakfast arrived the next morning at their suite at the Bellagio, Pepper had assumed it was a prelude to packing up, driving to McCarron Airport and high-tailing it back to L.A.

Instead, as Tony gulped down the last bite of his croissant, he'd said, "let's go for a drive."

"Um … okay. Planning on cruising the Strip?"

"Nah." The Stark smirk. "I've got something better in mind …"

Soon, the two of them and an enthusiastic Jamey were packed into their Audi A8 and on the road – Tony driving, Pepper in the back with Jamey, who was running her Lightning McQueen toy up and down every available surface (including Mommy). But after an hour of looking out the window at the "scenery" on State Highway 95, something was bothering Pepper. "Tony?"

"Yeah, hon?"

"We're, um, kind of out in the middle of nowhere."

"Yes. At the moment we are."

Pepper waited for more. When none was forthcoming, she continued. "This is supposed to be better than the Strip?"

"We're not there yet."

She loved him, but he could be _so_ infuriating … "So where's 'there'?"

"You'll see."

"Tony …"

"Hey, you don't hear Jamey complaining. You doing okay, girl?"

"Drive! Drive! Vrooooom!" Jamey replied, swooping Lightning up in the air – and narrowly missing Pepper's head.

"See? It's all good – just relax and enjoy the ride."

Pepper almost replied, decided it wouldn't help and instead started a game of Angry Birds III on her beta-model FutureDesk.

But it wasn't long after that she felt the car pull over to the shoulder. "Something wrong, Tony?" she asked, looking up.

"Nope. We're here. Come on out, bring the kid!" He turned off the engine and got out.

With more than a little trepidation, Pepper unstrapped Jamey from her car seat and brought her out into what seemed at first glance the least interesting piece of real estate in the Western Hemisphere. Flat, brown, dusty, punctuated only occasionally by a chunk of sagebrush or a low-lying cactus that looked embarrassed to be there. She saw a tumbleweed rolling across the landscape in the distance. Mostly, though, she kept her eyes on Jamey, whose hand she was holding more firmly than usual, and the ground, in case of rattlesnakes or other hostile reptiles.

Tony smiled widely. "Whaddaya think?"

Pepper had no idea how she was supposed to respond to that. "Well, it certainly is … unspoiled."

"Not for long." He strutted about for a few moments, then looked up at the sky and took a deep breath. "Beautiful sunshine, isn't it?"

Pepper glanced up. Sure enough, not a cloud in the sky, even in the middle of January. Probably hadn't been one there for months … "Yeah. Lots of it, too."

"Exactly!" he replied enthusiastically. "Exactly ..."

When he still didn't elaborate, Pepper decided to try another tack. "Where exactly is 'here'?"

"About twenty miles west of Indian Springs, maybe ten southeast of Mercury. Just over the border from Clark County into Nye."

In short, it wasn't nowhere. It was about a half-hour's drive _past_ nowhere. "Okay, Tony, I give up. What is so special about this particular spot in the middle of the desert?"

Tony looked at her quizzically, as if to say, _what, isn't it obvious?_ "You remember the board meeting last week, right?"

"Well, I was there, but …" She got a tighter grip on a struggling Jamey's wrist, as the toddler tried to pull away and explore who knows what. "… but I don't recall discussing anything involving empty wasteland."

Tony got an "oh, that's right, you can't _actually_ read my mind, it just seems that way sometimes" look on his face, and backtracked. "Okay. You remember we were discussing our new bottleneck with arc reactor production?" _New_ was in contrast to the _old_ bottleneck – securing an adequate supply of palladium – which Stark Industries had likely solved via a new contract with a South African mining concern.

"Yes – there was some concern as to how we were going to get enough energy to fill all the reactors we'd be producing. You had me contact LADWP and SoCal Edison about it …"

"And they weren't very optimistic. Or helpful."

"To put it kindly. Sunday night, when we last talked about it, you were so frustrated that you said we'd probably be better off starting our own utility." She chuckled at the memory.

"Actually, my specific words were, 'it might be smarter to generate our own'." He suddenly noticed Jamey's attempts at escape, picked her up and balanced her on his left hip.

Pepper flexed her now-unburdened fingers. "Right. And then you got The Look, took your copy of Heinlein's _Friday_ off the living room shelf, left the room and I didn't see you until the next morning."

"I was re-reading the bits about the Shipstone Corporation. You've read it – what did a Shipstone do that was so special?"

"Packed more energy into a smaller space than had ever been done before. Like an arc reactor – I get that. But what …?" She waved a hand at the desolate landscape.

"Where did the Shipstone people get the energy from? To put into the Shipstones?"

"Um … that, I don't recall."

Tony didn't say a word, simply pointed up.

And with that, Pepper wondered if _she_ was getting The Look. Arc reactors, the board discussion, the calls to the utilities, this empty chunk of real estate – it all clicked into place, in an instant. A slow smile spread across her face as she realized how … _perfect_ Tony's plan was.

She turned to him and Jamey. "A solar panel farm."

Tony grinned. "Ding-ding-ding. You win the prize."

"Ding-ding!" Jamey cried, then giggled.

"That's right, button-nose. See, while you and Mommy were looking at the canals in the Venetian and playing Climb The Escalators, Daddy's helper Aunt Natalie was hooking him up with some friends of friends … of friends … of hers in the federal Bureau of Land Management!" He dropped the sing-song voice and turned back to Pepper. "They own huge chunks of the Great Basin, and if you catch them at the right time – like when they're desperately looking for new revenue sources to curb the federal deficit – they're willing to sell small parts of it. I have a handshake agreement with the local BLM chief poobah for Stark Industries to purchase about 2,000 acres –" He waved his free arm at the mostly-dead land in front of them. "– right here."

"Two thousand? That's, what, over three square miles?" She wasn't doubtful so much as amazed.

Tony nodded. "I think it might end up being the largest in the world – I'm not sure the spread of that big PV array they started throwing up in Ontario a few years back, but I can't imagine it's this size. And this is the Nevada desert, whereas Ontario … well, we won't have to worry much about snow here. If the board is willing to dream big, we could build an arc-reactor assembly factory out here too – put the things together and charge them up in one location ..."

"And no need for power lines, which can lose over a quarter of the juice they carry, because it's going straight from the generators to the reactors …," Pepper continued for him.

"… it'll be right by the state highway, less than two hours from Vegas, a half-day to L.A. or Phoenix, so distribution will be a breeze …"

"… I bet the government will give SI huge tax breaks for utilizing green energy …"

"… not to mention creating, what, two thousand construction jobs in one of the hardest-hit employment areas in the country – plus whoever'll work at the farm and the factory … oh, and did I mention that the largest palladium deposit in the U.S. is almost a straight shot from here?"

"Wait, the Stillwater formation …"

"… is in south-central Montana, an hour from Interstate 15 …"

"… which also runs right through Las Vegas!" Pepper was actually bouncing on her toes, she was getting so excited. "Oh, if this works …!"

"We'll make it work. Hell, we should have done it decades ago. Like Friday Baldwin said – 'Those who spoke of energy scarcity and of conserving energy simply did not understand the situation. The sky was raining soup; what was needed was a bucket to carry it.' We do this, we've got a three-square-mile bucket – all we'll need to do afterward is make enough cups to give everybody a drink."

Pepper put an arm around Tony, and he reciprocated. "Tony, this could be the biggest thing to happen to SI since … well, since you got back from Afghanistan."

"I'm aiming higher. I want this to be the biggest thing since Great-Grandpa Isaac decided to branch out into Gatling guns 130 years ago. We've always said, we can rebuild the whole company around arc-reactor technology if we can build enough of them, fill enough of them, and create the products they'll work in. This project could give us two out of the three. This …" He motioned toward the (currently) barren landscape. "… this could be our game-changer."

Jamey was looking in the direction her dad was pointing, but seeing something else – a lone figure scurrying from scrub to scrub. "Bunny!"

Tony looked, and saw it too. "That, my dear girl, is a jackrabbit."

"Jaquabbid," she parroted.

"That's right." He squeezed her, and Pepper, a little tighter. "And we plan to give that rabbit some company."


	7. 15 October 2013: October Surprise

Vignette #7

15 October 2013 – October Surprise

* * *

><p>Egads, he hated Congressional hearings ...<p>

Every time he had to testify in front of one of those groups of grandstanding failed lawyers, Tony Stark died a little inside. That such decrepit men and women, who knew so little about the subjects they were discussing yet always felt the need to display their ignorance at length, were actually allowed to run in some small way the United States government, never ceased to give him pause. And indigestion. It was one of the reasons he was so cantankerous when required to attend their little gavottes: because of his general contempt for the idiocy of most of them.

The other reason was that if he had to be there, he was at least going to keep himself entertained.

He had to admit, though, that this meeting had been better than most. Perhaps because the Appropriations Subcommittee for Defense included a couple of the more competent Senators. Perhaps because the subject at hand was Stark Industries' newly developed ForceShield technology, an honest-to-goodness _force field_ that could form the next generation of passive defense for U.S. Armed Forces installations. Or maybe somewhere in the last couple of years he'd just learned to relax, let the "distinguished gentlemen" (and gentlewomen) punch themselves out, and then go home to his lovely wife, brilliant kid, multi-billion-dollar corporation and mansion overlooking the Pacific. Whichever it was, he found he had a smile on his face as he answered the committee's questions, no matter how inane.

"And how soon do you think there could be a public demonstration of the ForceShield?" one of the committee members asked.

"Well … we could probably manage tomorrow afternoon, if you like. Unless you've already got a tee time lined up." That got some laughter from the gallery. Out of the corner of his eye, Tony saw Natalie Rushman – subbing for Pepper, who was back home with what looked like a flu bug – looking slightly mortified.

"As a matter of fact …," the senator drawled, to more laughter. "But I was thinking about sometime next year."

"Name the time and place, we'll be there," Tony replied with a Stark smirk.

"And you're totally confident that this ForceShield will do what you say it will?" one of the female senators inquired, none too diplomatically. She had a reputation for being a standing "no" vote against anything for the Defense Department, and pronounced "ForceShield" as if it were a euphemism for "oozing skin rash."

Tony could tell that most of her fellow committee members were irritated at their colleague for posing a question that had already been asked five times, and doing it so shrewishly besides. He decided to play to their discontent. "Sure am. Would you like me to show the video again?" Previously, he'd aired for them a clip of a test that had been run at Stark Industries, where a stunt driver had driven a Volkswagen Beetle into an operating ForceShield at 35 miles per hour. The driver (and the ForceShield) had emerged unhurt, but the VW looked like a crushed soda can with tires afterward.

"No, Mr. Stark, that won't –"

"Because I really don't mind showing it again. Not at all."

"Really, Mr. Stark, I –"

"I mean, 'cause I could watch it over and over. For me, lemme tell you, it never gets old ..." By now, Tony had most of the gallery and a good third of the committee in stitches.

The liberal senator who was the brunt of the joke was now in high dudgeon and proceeded to begin a diatribe against Tony, which prompted a conservative one to lash back at her. As they hectored each other, Tony turned to Natalie, who was staring at her own lap. "Don't worry, Natalie, buck up! I've been doing these dog-and-pony shows for years – it's okay …"

"It's not that, Tony. I just got a text from Pepper." She showed him her PDA:

_Natalie – have Tony text me – urgent!_

"Odd …," Tony mumbled, turning his own Stark Industries FuturePhone back on. Quickly, he tapped in:

_Pep, what's up?_

He only had to wait a few seconds before a reply came:

_I don't have the flu._

_But I know what I do have._

_The stick says +._

It took a few seconds for the import of the message to hit him. And about thirty seconds more to realize that someone was talking to him. "Mr. Stark? Mr. Stark?"

Quickly, Tony looked up and realized that the head of the committee was addressing him – had probably asked a question and was awaiting an answer. "Um, my apologies, Senator. Could I, er … beg the committee for a short recess?"

"Well, Mr. Stark, I …"

"Thanks, 'preciate it." And without another word, Tony was out of his chair, heading toward the exit, typing on his PDA like mad …

_(Author's endnote: you think Tony's in shock now – wait until they do the first sonogram, and he finds out that they're expecting … twins.)_


	8. 23 June 2014: Learning the Hard Way

Vignette #8

23 June 2014 – Learning the Hard Way

_(Author's note: I can't for one second vouch for the accuracy of the science or pseudo-science of the following. It's just a story. We all good with that? Okay, let's rock …)_

* * *

><p>"You okay, Tone?"<p>

"Yeah, just sleep-deprived." Tony Stark patted Rhodey on the shoulder as they walked across the tarmac at Vandenberg Air Force Base. "No need to worry, Platypus."

"Now, Tony … when you say I don't have to worry, that's when I really start worrying …"

Tony stopped walking and turned to his friend. "Rhodey, the demonstration's already set up. The product has tested out fine on everything we've thrown at it for months now. All I need to do today is play MC for the demo. No. Need. To worry."

"Okay, okay." They continued walking. "The twins are really working you over, huh?"

Tony nodded wearily. Anne Marie Stark and Anthony Yensin Stark had been born two minutes apart just over a month before. "The worst part is when one of them wakes up in the night, they wake the other one up. And they trade off every hour or two. I'll tell you, though, Pepper's in worse shape than I am. Jamey just turned three, and between the lot of them she's actually considered taking a leave of absence from the company."

"Just to take care of the brood?"

"Hell, just to catch up on her sleep!" They both laughed as they mounted the small stage to join the other dignitaries and observers. Besides them, there were representatives from the Departments of Defense and Homeland Security; high-ranking members of the U.S. Army, Air Force and Marine Corps; about ten Senators and Representatives (with almost twice that many staffers dancing attendance on them); and a few members of the Stark Industries board. Tony and Rhodey sat down in the front row next to Ronny Blankenship and waited for General Meade to open the festivities.

Meade wasn't one to waste time on foofaraw. "Good morning, folks. We're all here, as you know, to watch a demonstration of the Stark Industries ForceShield passive defense system. It's all yours, Tony." Without another word, he walked over and took the seat next to Rhodey.

Tony went to the podium and detached the cordless mic. He was finding that the less he had to deal with a podium, the more comfortable he felt. "Good morning, ladies, gentlemen, members of Congress …" Polite laughter. "Seriously, I think you're going to enjoy this. Stark Industries may be transitioning out of the weapons business, but we still support our soldiers on the front lines, and we want them to be protected from anything the forces of evil try to throw at them. Thus, the ForceShield system. Force fields aren't just for science-fiction novels anymore, folks – they're now for the safety of our men and women in uniform."

Tony motioned toward the demonstration model. Two twenty-five-foot metal poles with repetitive small protuberances stood fifty feet apart on the runway, linked at the top and bottom by similar but longer objects. "I'm not going to bore you with a lot of advanced physics, but I do want to give you the basics. Simply put, the ForceShield is a frame designed to create a net. The net is made up of a combination of negative electric charges, and proton beams like what might be created by a linear accelerator. Between them, they're designed to stop anything that comes at it, no matter how big or small. You couldn't get a sewing needle between the beams. And – as we'll show in a minute – you can't get a tank shell through them."

He pointed again, this time to a boxy object the size of a swamp cooler, its top glowing ice-blue. "This 1250-square-foot ForceShield is powered by a Stark Industries 21.65-inch arc-reactor-powered generator, designed specifically for the purpose. The generator is built to power sixteen ForceShield arrays of this size for a year, running non-stop. A ForceShield requires too much power to run practically on, say, a standard gas generator, so I don't recommend trying it. But we've worked to keep the production costs of both the array and the generators reasonable, and the arc reactors are charged at our new solar panel farm in Nevada. It's cheap, it's 'green' and most importantly, it works."

And now was the time to make it work. "Okay, Bill," he called to William Ginter Riva, Stark Industries' head of R&D, who with his assistant was running the demo. "Let's light this candle."

Riva punched a couple of keys on a keyboard, flipped a switch. There was a faint flash of blue light over the entire space contained by the array. Then the view between the poles turned shimmery, like heat rising off the ground on a hot day, but with a slight bluish tinge.

"We, uh, haven't been able to do anything about the blue. We're thinking later models may come with a color-contrast knob or something." That got chuckles from those who were old enough to remember 1970s-model televisions. "But the space within the array is now functionally impenetrable. Air can get through, though some water vapor bounces off – that's the shimmer you're seeing. But for anything much bigger … Wally, you got your glove on?"

Walter Dreiberg, Riva's assistant, had just finished pulling on the kind of rubber glove people used for household cleaning. He put his gloved hand against the shimmering space and put his whole body weight on it, crossing one leg over the other as if he were a fedora-topped businessman in an old movie, leaning against a wall while waiting for a streetcar. There were a few oohs and aahs from the crowd.

"Now, Wally only weighs about, oh, 140 pounds, so we've arranged for an additional, and larger, demonstration of the ForceShield's capabilities …" Tony pointed beyond the array, where an armored vehicle was sitting on the tarmac about a thousand feet distant. "That over there is an M1A1 Abrams battle tank, with RH armor, depleted uranium strike plates, a 120-millimeter M256 smoothbore cannon, one .50-caliber machine gun, two .308-caliber machine guns, and a top road speed of just over 40 miles per hour. Or, for you civilians, it's one bad mamma jamma of a tank." More laughter. "Our tank commander for the day is Marine Corps Major William P. Hotchkiss from Camp Pendleton, who should already be patched into this feed. You ready, Willie Pete?"

A voice came from the speakers with what Rhodey once described as a half-Alabaman/half-Martian accent. "Readah t'dish it aht. Yew be'er be readah t'take it!"

"I admire your confidence, Major. All right, open up with the cannon – high-explosive shell first." He turned to the crowd, put on a pair of sunglasses and motioned for them to do the same. Wally stopped leaning on the force field and began walking back to Bill Riva and the generator.

"Fahrin'!" Major Hotchkiss declared. There was a loud "BOOM," then a shell screamed straight for the middle of the array. People on the platform barely had time to gasp before there was a louder, closer "BOOOOOM," a bright flash of light …

… and some clatters as the few surviving pieces of the HE shell touched down on the far side of the ForceShield. The array was unaffected.

Spontaneous clapping broke out, but Tony raised a hand. "Please everyone – hold your applause until the end of the show. Major, they liked the 'splosion – how about we try some armor-piercing this time?"

"Shore thang, hot shot!" the major replied, and a few seconds later there was another "BOOM," followed by another "BOOOOOM" and a few more clatters, but a smaller flash of light. Otherwise the result was the same: the AP shell was obliterated, the ForceShield kept humming along.

"All right," Tony resumed, "maybe some canister?"

BOOM! BOOOOOM! This time there was a lot of clattering, as the destruction of the canister cartridge sent over a thousand tungsten balls ricocheting all over the landscape – on the other side of the ForceShield from the assembled throng. None of them got through, though one did bounce _over_ the array and go rolling past a surprised Bill and Wally.

"Eh, that one got lucky," Tony mock-grumbled. "One more test – come on in, guys!"

The tank began rolling toward the array.

Tony took off his shades and turned once again to the audience. "Major Hotchkiss and his crew are going to bump the ForceShield with the tank, then attempt to push through it. We're only having them bump it because … well, because the Marine Corps wants their tank back in operating cond …" He looked back toward the array and stopped cold. That tank was coming in way too fast. "… um, operating condition – Willie Pete? You need to reduce speed."

"Heyll Ah do!"

Tony's eyes went wide. What was this crazy Marine doing? "Major, that speed is not advisable. You need to slow down and …"

"Ah don't need ta slow down one bit! This is an Abrams, boy! Ee-raqis couldn't hannle an Abrams. Aff-ghanis couldn't hannle an Abrams. It's comin' in at tawp spaid, an' yew be'er hope yer electric fence is as good as yew THANK it is!" And the tank kept closing.

Tony knew where this was going, and it wasn't going to be pretty. He pulled the mic away from his face and looked at General Meade. "General, how fast can you get an ambulance here?"

Meade was already punching numbers on his cell phone. "I have one on standby, just in case. Two, three minutes, tops."

"Good. Thanks." Back to the mic, and the major. "Major Hotchkiss, this is not, repeat, NOT, part of the demonstration …"

"It is naow! Brace yerse'f, boy!"

Tony muttered "shit" under his breath. Meanwhile, Meade, having summoned the medics, motioned for Tony to pass him the mic. "_Major_, this is _General_ Meade! I don't care how big you think your nads are or how much you want to show 'em off, you reduce speed and get back to the plan, pronto!"

"Naw 'ffense, general, but you ain't sudd'nly a Maree-eene – take 't up wi' my commandant!" This was followed by a rebel yell from Hotchkiss, and a burst of static.

"He's lost his mind!" Rhodey groaned. Meade passed the mic to a Marine general, one of the DoD observers, but it turned out that the static had been Hotchkiss cutting off the communication link from his end. Tony could only stare, jaw clenched, as the tank closed to two hundred feet, one hundred, fifty …

WHAM-M-M-M! A flash of blue fire, and then the sight of what looked like a khaki tin can being crushed by Godzilla as the Abrams tank folded like an accordion. The turret, its cannon bent at a right angle upward, popped off the chassis like a bottle cap and landed twenty feet away from the rest of the wreckage. The treads, or what was left of them, crumpled to either side of what had been the body of the battle vehicle – and what would soon be, if things didn't happen fast, four Marines' funeral pyre. Scratch that – _three_ Marines' funeral pyre, as one had been in the turret. He was crawling out now, looking rather woozy but not spurting blood from anywhere. The others …

Tony let out the breath he didn't realize he'd been holding as he heard the sirens of two ambulances approaching. Turning, he saw that they were followed by two other emergency response vehicles – fire trucks, which he hoped were carrying the Jaws of Life or whatever equivalent the Air Force used.

As the vehicles pulled up to the scene, it was obvious that the ForceShield was still shimmering away as if nothing had occurred. There was no applause, however – everybody was focused on the carcass of the Abrams, worrying about the three men who were inside and hopefully still alive.

Which, thankfully, they turned out to be. The emergency personnel got them free within a few minutes and hauled them and their turret-protected compatriot off to the Vandenberg infirmary. Major Hotchkiss appeared to have sustained a skull fracture, two broken arms, a dislocated hip and (if the mutterings of the Marine general from DoD were to be taken as fact) a future court-martial hearing. Once they were clear, the fire crews began spraying retardant on the smoking remains of the decidedly non-operational – and unfixable – tank.

With the worst now passed, there was a hubbub of excited conversation among the observers, and several took the time to slap Tony on the back, shake his hand and tell him (albeit in shaky voices, after what they'd seen) that they were definitely interested in what the ForceShield had to offer. Tony accepted the accolades perfunctorily, even salvaging a Stark smirk for the occasion, but when they dispersed he sighed with relief.

Which Rhodey noticed. "You still okay?"

Tony waggled a hand. "More or less. What was Hotchkiss _thinking_?"

"Wrong verb, Tone." Rhodey shook his head. "Some folks just gotta learn the hard way. And until they do learn, everyone around them suffers."

"Yeah …" Tony mumbled, still staring out at the ex-tank. "My thoughts exactly."

Rhodey waited, suspecting that more was coming.

He was right. "How many people suffered while I was learning the hard way all those years? Or not learning, as the case may be …" Tony sighed again, and turned his head to look at Rhodey. "Makes a man think."

"But you _have_ learned now, right?"

Tony grimaced. "Damn, I hope so." Then he motioned to Bill and Wally. "Show's over, boys! Shut the generator down ..."


	9. 4 January 2015: Me and My Friend

Vignette #9

4 January 2015 – Me and My Friend

_(Author's note: this one was a bit tougher for me, as I'm not used to writing from this point of view. But the potential was too good to pass up. Hope it works …)_

* * *

><p>He's there when I wake up in the morning. 'Cause he's my friend.<p>

I say hi to him. He wakes up. He waves back. He can't talk, so he has to wave. It's okay.

It's a little cold, so I stay in bed until Daddy comes in and says good morning princess. Then he gives me a big hug. I like Daddy's hugs. I like Mommy's hugs too, but I like Daddy's hugs most. But I don't tell Mommy that.

Now Daddy says time to get up. I hide under the blanket. He can't find me. But I don't want him to get scared, so I stick my head out. Then I hide again. But then I get up like he said. He throws out my pullup and gets me dressed. Soon I won't have to wear a pullup at night. Mommy and Rupert taught me to use the potty like Mommy does. But at night, Mommy says I still need the pullup.

I ask Daddy what's on the jenda for today. Jenda is a word Mommy and Daddy and Aunt Natalie say. It means what they want to do that day. Mommy and Daddy always smile when I say words they say. 'Cept for the time I said the word Mommy said when she spilled coffee on her dress. Then only Daddy smiled. Mommy didn't.

Daddy says he's home all day today. Some days he has to go to work. Some days he has to go to other places. Places far, far away. Mommy shows them to me on a map. Some days Mommy goes to work too. Then Rupert comes over and takes care of me and Anne Marie and A.Y. But today Mommy and Daddy don't have to go to work, 'cause it's Sun-day.

Daddy says he's gonna watch football games and tinker in his lab. Tinker is another Mommy and Daddy word. It means build neat stuff, only you don't know what you're building until you build it. Daddy builds a lot of really cool stuff. Some of it works.

Daddy says Mommy will probly read a book and maybe take you and Anne Marie and A.Y. down to the beach if it's not too cold. I ask can my friend come to the beach too. Daddy says of course he can, he can handle the beach.

Then it's breakfast time. Me and my friend go to the dining room. Mommy is making waffles. Daddy and I like them with strawbies and whip cream. It makes the waffles look silly but they taste good. Mommy likes them with syrup. She doesn't like strawbies. Anne Marie and A.Y. eat bit of strawbies and Mommy and Daddy feed them stuff with spoons out of little jars. Anne Marie and A.Y. are sloppy and get food on their faces and Mommy and Daddy have to wipe their faces off. I feed myself and don't have to wipe my face 'cept a little bit.

My friend doesn't like waffles. He doesn't eat.

After breakfast I go wash my hands 'cause I got them all sticky. Then my friend and I go back to my room and play with Legos. I build a big tall tower, the way Daddy showed me. He says to make a big tall tower that stays up, it has to be wide on the bottom and skinny on the top. My friend helps me. He brings me blocks. I have to stand on my bed to put on the top block.

Then my friend helps me knock it down. Then we build another big tall tower.

Anne Marie and A.Y.'s room used to be my room. Before Mommy and Daddy brought them home, they told me I'd get a whole new room. My old room had pictures of rocket ships and sports people and a castle and stuff on the walls. When I got my new room Daddy said I could have anything on the walls I wanted. I said I wanted big buildings and machines on it 'cause when I grow up I want to make buildings and machines like Daddy. He sniffled. Daddy sniffles when I say stuff he likes. And my new room has big buildings on the walls and big machines and flying machines and people tinker on the machines.

I get bored playing with Legos. I go play with my computer. My computer looks kinda like a book 'cause it's shaped like a big book, and kinda like a TV 'cause it has a screen. You can do stuff by touching the screen. I like to play games on it and there are books in it that I can read. And if I touch the thing that looks like a fireball I can do other stuff and find out things.

I showed my friend how to use the computer. He can touch stuff on it. I tell him which ones to touch. We play a number game and then I read Knuffle Bunny to him. It's a funny story.

I hear Anne Marie and A.Y. in their room. They're making noise. They always make noise. They don't have any teeth and they can't walk and they can't talk right. They just make goofy sounds, not real talk. Mommy says I used to do that too. I don't think I did. They can't read either. Mommy says when they grow up a little I can teach them to read, 'cause I already know how. I wish they would grow up fast 'cause right now they're noisy and boring.

I read Green Eyes to my friend. Then I'm bored again. I ask the house what time it is. Our house is named Jarvis. He talks funny, but he knows lots of stuff. He says it's ten twenty two. I ask him where Daddy is. He says your father is in the living room watching TV. I say thanks to Jarvis 'cause Mommy wants me to be polite. Then I tell my friend we're gonna go see Daddy.

Daddy sees me when I come in the room. He says hey pumpkin and he holds his arms out. That means I can climb up on his lap. I like being on Daddy's lap when he watches TV. He shares his snacks and does funny stuff like talk to the TV screen. He tells me about what's happening on the TV too. I just like to sit there and eat chips and watch the people in the funny clothes run into each other. My friend sits on the floor near us. He picks up stuff if me or Daddy drops it.

Then Mommy comes in and says it's time for lunch. She looks at Daddy and says how many chips has she had? Daddy says oh come on pep it's Sunday. Mommy rolls her eyes. She looks funny when she rolls her eyes. But she only does it when Daddy talks, not when anybody else talks. She says let's go Jamey. Me and my friend follow her to the dining room.

Mommy made my favorite lunch, tuna salad sandwich and baby carrots. I eat it all up. Mommy feeds Anne Marie and A.Y. stuff from jars again, and a little tuna salad too. Then she tells me to wash up 'cause we're gonna go down to the beach.

I wash my hands, and then I put on my big puffy coat. It's red and yellow and looks like Daddy's metal suit. That's why it's my favorite. It has a hood too. Then I put on my mittens and my rain boots over my shoes. My friend has a little coat so he doesn't get wet, 'cause getting wet will make him sick. I put his coat on too.

Mommy comes in and says good job you got ready by yourself. I go and help her get Anne Marie's coat on. A.Y. always lets Mommy put his coat on, but Anne Marie always fights. Then Mommy puts them in the stroller. I go get my friend and we walk down to the beach.

My friend and I look for seashells to pick up. Seashells are pretty, even some of the broken ones. Anne Marie and A.Y. just sit in the stroller and look around and make noise. There's a man who follows us while we're on the beach. He's wearing a black suit and has a thingie in his ear. Mommy says he's here to protect us if someone tries to hurt us. She says there are people who don't like Daddy and might try to hurt him by hurting us. I say that's stupid. She says the world can be a stupid place sometimes but don't you be stupid. I say I won't.

We see someone else on the beach pushing a stroller too. It's a friend of Mommy's. She's an actress. That means she gets to be in movies and play pretend. I asked Mommy if I can watch the lady's movies. She said not until you're much much older like fifteen. That's a long time. They talk for a while. My friend and I try to build a sand castle but the sand is too wet and it's not good for my friend's hand. So we look for more seashells. Then Mommy's friend goes away and Mommy says it's time to go home.

We get home and Mommy sprays my friend and my rain boots and the stroller wheels with an air hose to get the sand off. Then we go inside. I go to my room and take off my coat and mittens and rain boots and my friend's coat. My friend and I go to the living room but Daddy's not there. I ask Jarvis where he is. Jarvis says your father is down stairs in his lab. So I help my friend down the stairs to Daddy's lab. My friend can go up and down stairs but he's not very good at it. I'm good at it so I help him.

When we get to the lab, my friend goes over to the fire stingasher. I don't know why he always does that. Daddy tells him no no no no leave that alone. Then Daddy has me and my friend bring him tools and move stuff around. I like helping Daddy. Today he's working on one knee of his suit, 'cause the last time he used it it got busted by an arpie gee. I don't know what that is. But it must be really strong to break Daddy's suit.

We get it fixed right. Daddy says thanks for the help princess and gives me a hug. I tell him to give my friend a hug too for helping and he does. My friend likes hugs too. Then Jarvis says dinner is ready and Missiz Stark – that's Mommy – wants you to come upstairs. So we wash the goopy stuff off our hands and go upstairs. I help my friend up the stairs too.

Dinner is pot roast and potatoes and boiled vegebles. I don't really like it. But Daddy says there's fudge brownies for dessert if you finish everything on your plate. Mommy and Daddy always say if you're not hungry enough to finish dinner you're not hungry enough for dessert. So I eat all my dinner, even the udgy boiled vegebles. But I only have one brownie because my tummy is all full. It's good though.

After dinner there's another football game on TV. My friend and I watch with Daddy while Mommy gives Anne Marie and A.Y. their bath and gets them ready for bed. Then Mommy gives me a bath. I don't want to but Daddy says I have to so I go to the bathroom. I don't splash much. Splashing gets Mommy wet and she doesn't like it. She's already wet from Anne Marie and A.Y. splashing. But I still don't. My friend can't take a bath but he holds my towel. I can dry myself off and put on my own pajamas too. My friend goes to my room. He'll wait for me there.

I go see Daddy in the living room. He turned off the TV. He says the game is a blowout. I ask him what's a blowout and he says a blowout is when one team scores most of the points and makes the game boring. So now I know another Mommy and Daddy word.

Then Daddy picks me up and swings me over his shoulder. That's fun and I laugh. He carries me to my room and sets me down. He says you need to go to sleep now because tomorrow is Monday and Rupert will be here early. I like Rupert but not as much as I like Mommy and Daddy. I say I don't want to go to sleep yet. But I'm tired.

Daddy gives me a kiss and Mommy gives me a kiss and a hug and tucks me in my bed. Then they say good night little princess and turn off the light and close the door.

My friend is still there though. I can see him 'cause of the night light. He comes over to my bed and gives me a hug with his arm. I give him a big hug like I do every night and say I love you Dummy. Then I lie down to go to sleep.

Today was fun.


	10. 3 May 2016: Stark Expo 2016

Vignette #10

3 May 2016 – Stark Expo 2016

* * *

><p>It was a long time coming, but tonight was the night.<p>

A lot had happened since the last Stark Expo ended in disaster – when Justin Hammer's robots, controlled by the renegade Ivan Vanko, had laid waste to much of the exposition's Flushing Meadows site – six years before. It had taken most of that time to rebuild, and in some ways improve, the complex. It also took a lot of money, which was part of why it had taken so long to finish, and a lot of co-operation from the city and state of New York (which didn't speed things up any).

A lot had happened in general, and a lot had happened with Stark Industries. Eight and a half years after Tony Stark made his out-of-the-blue declaration that SI was getting out of the weapons business, that lofty goal was close to completion. By the end of the year, the company would deliver the final orders of its Jericho missile system to the U.S. Army. Then it would be able to concentrate just that much more on its new core businesses: transportation, prostheses and other medical equipment, passive-defense systems, high-tech personal electronics, and most of all power supply, all built around the arc-reactor technology that all over the world was changing how people accessed and used energy. (And changing what the world looked like, too – in addition to their original Nevada site, SI now had arc reactor factories/solar panel farms in Arizona, Texas, Mexico, Yemen, India, Mongolia and Australia, plus others in various stages of construction in New Mexico, Argentina, Libya, Namibia and the United Arab Emirates. All of them large enough to spot from orbit.)

Stark Industries was prospering like never before, and pulling numerous other corporations in its wake. And now, it was time to celebrate a little.

The center of the celebration on Stark Expo 2016's opening night was also the centerpiece of the renovated site – the new 14,000-seat Stark-Thomson Amphitheater. (Thomson, the Canadian information services company, had come through with the cash to help construct the venue, in exchange for co-naming rights.) The whopping theater-in-the-round had opened a month before with a unique double-header: an outdoor NBA game between the Brooklyn Nets and New York Knicks, followed by a concert featuring Jay-Z and Alicia Keys. Now on this balmy spring night, it was filled up to the top level with executives, salesmen, programmers and fanboys (and fangirls) from hundreds of companies, ready to be welcomed to the future of whatever Stark Industries had in store for them.

Already there was a lot for them to chew on. SI's main presentation was going to be on the second night of the Expo, when they would debut the long-awaited first products of their nascent automotive division – the arc-reactor-powered Vellon roadster, Alberon family sedan and Centurion SUV. Apple had a pavilion of their own, as well as the big stage on Night Four, and there were rumors that they planned to reveal a business-oriented computer that could run MacOS, Windows or Linux-based programs, and potentially capture a decent share of the PC market. Oracle reportedly had a big announcement prepared, as did Northrop Grumman, Elbit, Lenovo, Airbus, Mitsubishi, General Dynamics, Siemens, Google … pretty much anybody that was anybody in the electronics, defense and heavy industry fields.

And then there was the real coup. It had just been announced that morning that the next-to-last night of the Expo would feature a debate, on the subject "The Future of America." Tackling the topic would be the four major candidates for the 2016 U.S. presidential election, all of whom had already sewn up their party's nominations. They'd wanted to issue the press release days earlier, but it had taken that long to nail down Senator Rand Paul, the American Tea Party's representative. Apparently someone hadn't been passing the messages along to the senator; from the sound of it, heads were going to roll for that …

But now, there was a distraction from all the other plans, as a sonic boom rang out over Long Island Sound.

"Here he comes!" someone shouted, and sure enough, there was a spark of light flying toward the arena as the sound system began blaring the Sempers' "I Am Iron Man." (The Sempers had been another Tony Stark discovery, one more unusual than most. The five-piece metal band made up of Marines stationed at Camp Pendleton were great admirers, and had sent Tony a demo CD of their music. Tony had liked it so much that he'd paid for their studio time to cut a full album. Just six months ago, it had cracked the top 25 at iTunes.) As the crowd began to roar, the spark grew, soon resolving itself into a familiar red and gold armored suit.

The suit began to descend toward the stage, and a strong female voice announced, "Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the future – and WELCOME! To STARK EXPO! TWO! THOUSAND! SIXTE-E-E-EN!"

KLANG! The suit landed at center stage in a kneeling three-point stance, as the crowd went crazy. With the music still pumping, it stood, and robotic arms arose from the stage to begin removing the various pieces of armor …

… only to reveal, not Tony Stark, but a strawberry blonde in a red pantsuit with gold accents and wearing a headset microphone?

The attendees began to quiet in confusion, before people suddenly realized who it must be. And then it got _really_ loud.

Virginia Marie Potts "Pepper" Stark took it all in stride, waving and smiling to the crowd like a career politician as she waited out the onslaught of noise (including the end of the song). When the decibel level dropped enough, she remarked, "I don't suppose you were expecting … someone else?"

That got a laugh, during which she took the opportunity to smooth out a few suit-induced wrinkles in her outfit. "Unfortunately, Tony couldn't be here tonight – he was called away at the last minute to take care of a little emergency. I'm not at liberty to give details …" Pause for crowd reaction. "… but if you check your favorite news website tomorrow morning, you should be able to make an educated guess."

The thousands in the stands were lapping it up. Someone began a fist-pumping "I-ron-Man!" chant, and for a minute a good portion of the crowd joined in. Pepper grinned and waited her turn.

"Now, he assured me that he _will_ be here tomorrow night – 'I wouldn't miss it for the world,' was his exact words. And if you know anything about Tony, you know he's not going to skip a chance to show off a car he's been working on …" More chuckles.

"But in the meantime, if you'll watch the screens …" Pepper indicated the four huge high-definition displays spaced around the top rim of the amphitheater. "… we have a special presentation for you. Lights, please?" The overhead and spots were turned off as Pepper sat down on the stage and the screens began to fill with blue light.

From the light emerged scenes of factories and labs, of robots working on planes and automobiles, of schematics for PDAs and helicopters, of army installations ringed by ForceShield rigs instead of chain-link fences, of solar panel farms extending for miles, of disabled vets walking around on almost-lifelike legs – all to the accompaniment of driving synthesizers. Finally, breaking through the hurricane of images, came the Stark Industries logo, with a musical sting and the slogan "Welcome To The Future."

As the crowd roared, the logo melted away, to be replaced by an image of the new giant arc reactor at the heart of the Stark Industries complex in Los Angeles. The camera panned down, to where Tony Stark, dressed in a blazer and slacks with a banded collar shirt, was casually strolling. And talking. "In 1849, Hermann Stark came to California to engineer equipment for the miners of the Gold Rush. Three decades later, his son Isaac started a business, designing and building irrigation equipment. Isaac's son August built Gatling guns for the doughboys of World War I and the soldiers at home battling the raids of Pancho Villa. August's grandson Howard helped Robert Oppenheimer split the atom and a generation of American presidents create 'the arsenal of democracy' to fight fascism, and later Communism.

"Today, we face a new world, with a new series of challenges. I believe the key to the 21st century isn't gold or water, not bullets or bombs." With that, he pointed to the arc reactor, blazing and humming above him. "It's power. Abundant, inexpensive power to run the vehicles, the computers, all the devices –" Out of his pocket, he pulled his Stark FuturePhone and held it up. "– on which our world increasingly depends."

The scene now switched to one of SI's solar farm/factory complexes. Pepper immediately identified it as the one in the Navajo Nation Reservation in northeast Arizona. That plant was a source of pride for Tony: not only had Stark Industries leased the land (almost five square miles) from the locals, they'd trained members of the Navajo and Hopi nations to run the facility as well. Currently the staff was over 80% First Nations, with a plan to reach 100% by 2020. One of them could be seen in the background as Tony (this time in a leather jacket, T-shirt and jeans) walked between the huge solar collectors.

"Stark Industries is committed to harnessing the most natural, least polluting power available – the power of the sun – and bringing it to the customer in the most convenient package possible." He held up, in his left hand, a Stark 12-inch arc reactor. "Imagine being able to run your car for the next ten years without filling up once." Then he raised his right hand to show, between thumb and forefinger, SI's smallest arc reactor, a ¾-inch model. "Or never having to recharge your tablet computer, or plug in your laptop. This is what we've been working toward at Stark Industries – a system where power is always portable, always affordable, always sustainable … and most of all, always available."

Again the scene changed, this time to an office setting. Tony, now in a black suit and tie, sat on the edge of a desk. Around him were displayed numerous Stark products, including a FutureDesk tablet, a prosthetic hand, and a model of the LS2A supersonic business jet being developed as part of SI's joint venture with Lockheed Martin. "There are a lot more things we're working on here at Stark Industries – and you'll be seeing them during the next three weeks here at Stark Expo 2016. Replacement limbs for amputees that look – and perform – close to the real thing. Small-scale particle accelerators that will allow any university to set up its own physics laboratory. Voice activation, robotics, home security, vehicle safety … we're working in those areas and many more.

"And that's just one company. There are over 80 corporations represented here at Stark Expo, all of them on the cutting edge of technological innovation. We want Stark Expo to be a place where people and companies are able to collaborate, to challenge each other, to be inspired and spurred on to improve people's lives. Forgive me if it sounds pie-in-the-sky, but … we don't just want this to be about making better products. We want Stark Expo to be about making a better world. That's … wait, what …?"

The cameras still rolling, Tony turned to see the top of a little blonde head toddling behind the desk, then a dark-haired one of about the same size. From somewhere came the voice of a kindergartener: "No, don't bother Daddy!" Giggles were the only response as Dark-Haired, showing himself to be a two-year-old boy, moved around the side of the desk and reached for the plane model.

"Oh, come here, you little stinkers," Tony said as he got up and walked off-screen. The little boy picked the LS2A model up from its stand and waved it around, making whooshing noises. As the crowd began to laugh, Tony returned, carrying a blonde girl the same age as the boy. He sat down on the edge of the desk again, set the girl on his knee and pulled the boy close to him.

Only then did he turn back to the camera. "When we at Stark Industries say 'welcome to the future,' it isn't just a sales pitch. Yeah, Jamey, you come here too!" He waved to his right, and a four- or five-year-old girl in a pink T-shirt and jeans joined him, looking very deliberately at the lens. "We're working to build a better future for these guys, and for all their peers, all over the world. Join us over the coming days as we see what the future holds – for us, and for them. Isn't that right, Anne Marie?" He bounced the girl that was on his knee, then pointed straight ahead. "Say hi to the folks out there."

"Hi-i!"

"Wshhhh!" the boy added, swinging the little plane through the air.

Jamey waved and said, "Welcome to the future – ow! A.Y.! Daddy, he hit me with the airplane …"


	11. 5 November 2016: Home Movies

Vignette #11

5 November 2016 – Home Movies

_(Author's note: very short one this time; I'm warming up for a real gut-wrencher next week. By the way, Jamey is 5 at this point.)_

* * *

><p>(Scene: a hallway at the Stark residence, as seen through a small handheld camera. The camera is moving along the hallway leading to the kitchen. Footsteps can be heard, but only barely, as if someone is tiptoeing.)<p>

PEPPER (from off-camera): Oh, this is too good …

(The camera turns the corner to reveal the kitchen. TONY and JAMEY are standing with their backs to the camera, operating a Kitchen-Aid-type mixer. Both appear to be wearing aprons.)

TONY (turns off mixer): Okay, what next?

JAMEY (looking down at a book): Next you add the chocolate chips.

TONY: Next, I add … the chocolate chips. (He picks up a measuring cup, dumps the contents into the mixing bowl, sets down the cup.) Uh, Jamey?

JAMEY: Yes, Daddy?

TONY: Is Mommy standing behind us?

JAMEY (turns around. Her apron has a picture of Remy from "Ratatouille," with the caption "Because I'm a cook!" She looks directly into the camera): Yes, Daddy.

TONY: And, perchance, is she holding her flip camera?

JAMEY (giggles): Yes, Daddy.

TONY (without turning around): Out. No paparazzi.

PEPPER: But it's so _cute_!

TONY: No paparazzi, I said! (He turns around. The apron reads "IRON MAN" above a picture of Iron Man, soaring through the air, with one upraised hand holding a waffle iron. He moves toward the camera, forming his hands into claws.) And what happens to the paparazzi, Jamey?

JAMEY (yelling in glee): They get TICKLED!

(The camera begins backing away slowly. TONY closes in.)

PEPPER: No … no, no no no AAAACK NO I'LL STOP I PROMIAAAGH!

TONY: Too la-a-ate!

(The camera shakes, suddenly points at the floor. Off-screen, PEPPER's screams continue.)

JAMEY (off-screen): Get her, Daddy –

(Recording ends.)


	12. 23 to 25 March 2018: The Big Fear

Vignette #12

23-25 March 2018 – The Big Fear

_(Author's note: slight Avengers crossover here.)_

* * *

><p>Until the phone call came Friday morning, Pepper had put her usual worries out of her mind.<p>

"Hello?"

"Mrs. Stark? This is Dr. Banner."

Pepper couldn't help but smile. When not turning into a giant green embodiment of 'roid-rage, Bruce Banner was always painfully polite. "Hi, Bruce. How's it going?"

"Oh, uh, fine, Mrs. Stark. But, um … have you heard anything from Tony?"

"No … why, what's going on?" The first sliver of ice began to form along her spine.

"Well … I don't know that anything's going on, but … he hasn't made it to the chalet yet. He said he'd be here by dinnertime – I just thought maybe there was a change of plans …"

"Hmmm … I wish I knew what to tell you, Bruce. He's probably just running late. He used to do that a lot, you know." She laughed, but it came out sounding more nervous than carefree. "Tell you what, if I hear anything, I'll let you know."

"Okay, thanks. You're right, it's probably nothing. Have a nice day."

"You too, Bruce. Goodbye."

She hung up and started doing some quick calculations. It was 10:52 a.m. local time. The chalet that served as Tony's European base was outside Zurich, Switzerland, which was … nine hours ahead of California. So almost 8 p.m. there – well after dinner …

"He's probably just running a little late," Pepper muttered to herself as she turned back to her desk and her work. But that sliver of ice was starting to grow.

* * *

><p>Nick had called Monday with the assignment. The Ugandan and Kenyan governments had been in talks with S.H.I.E.L.D. for weeks regarding a possible (and hopefully permanent) solution to the Lord's Resistance Army. The militant cultic group had been massacring and press-ganging civilians in the region for over three decades, but slowly the local governments had been hemming it in. Now they wanted to deliver the <em>coup de grace<em> – but for that, they needed a little outside help. The United States, being generous that way, had offered to provide their best, just say when. Monday morning, the call had come from Kampala: _when!_

Half the Avengers – Rogers, Rushman, Barton – were in Washington at the time, so they just headed to Africa from there. The rest – Tony, Banner and Odinsson – were all in California, so they met at LAX to ride over on Tony's plane, once Tony had finished meeting with the Stark Industries board Tuesday morning. For Tony, it was perfect timing; SI had just bought the old Italian Space Agency launch pad off the Kenyan coast for its burgeoning space division. He figured that after mopping up the LRA, he could fly to Malindi with Thor and Banner, check out the new acquisition and see about permanent housing in Malindi's growing resort district (he'd needed a good African base for Iron-Man-related activities for years), then send his compatriots to Switzerland in the plane. Meanwhile, he'd take the suit, drop in on SI's about-to-open solar panel farm/arc reactor factory near al-Jawf, Libya, and head up to the chalet himself. With luck, he'd be back home in L.A. by Saturday night.

Their departure had been simple enough. Pepper had given him a goodbye kiss that was impactful but still dignified. (Which was more than you could say for Jane Foster – she'd just about _climbed_ poor Thor before letting him go. Ah, youth.) And then the boys were off to go spread truth, justice and the blessings of superior firepower. She and Tony had explained to the kids that Daddy would be away on business for a few days, but should still be back in time for their planned trip to Legoland on Sunday. Jamey, Anne Marie and A.Y. were pretty much used to Daddy's trips by now, so no biggie.

Thursday morning (Thursday evening, Kenya time), Tony had called to let her know things were going wonderfully. Joseph Kony, leader of the LRA, was in custody; all his key lieutenants were either arrested or dead; and in the jungle, the mighty jungle, the lion slept tonight. He, Thor and Bruce were currently chowing down on impala steaks; he had a lead on a nice, well-fenced villa outside of Malindi within walking distance of the beach; and the launch platform was going to need (his words) "a fuckton of work" as the Italians had really let it go to seed. In general, though, a triumph. They would overnight there, and make their separate ways to Switzerland the next day.

But Tony hadn't made it the next day. Banner didn't know what was keeping him. And neither did Pepper.

Finally, around 2:30 p.m., Pepper got tired of being distracted and called home. "JARVIS?"

"Yes, Ms. Stark."

"Can you trace the transponder in Tony's suit? He should have checked in hours ago." Tony used to keep in constant contact with JARVIS whenever he was in the suit – but less so lately, as it had proved less necessary …

"I will endeavor to do so. Shall I focus on Africa north of the Equator?" JARVIS knew Tony's itinerary as well as Pepper did.

"Yes." Pepper visualized a map in her head. "Also check the Mediterranean and southern Europe, though."

"Accessing the appropriate satellites." And then, after a minute: "No signal found, Ms. Stark. Is there any reason to think he might be in a different part of the world?"

"Not unless you know something about his plans that I don't." She took a deep breath before continuing. "JARVIS, figure out where his last known signal was, and let me know. Then contact Nick Fury immediately. Tell him Tony's missing, and give him the same info. I'm going to make some calls." She hung up, and straightaway rang Switzerland. It was almost midnight there now, but if Bruce or Thor knew anything, she wanted to know it _now_.

Besides, the busier she kept, the less panic she would feel …

* * *

><p>Pepper kept that panic from welling up through the rest of the afternoon, through dinner with the kids and an umpteenth viewing of <em>Brave<em>, through getting the kids tucked in and pointed toward Slumberland. It was only at the end that reality threatened to intervene. She'd just given Anthony Yensin a goodnight kiss and was about to turn off the light when he said, "Daddy hug?"

She froze for a moment before answering. "Remember, A.Y.? Daddy is off working this week. He should be back in two more days." She held up two fingers, hoping they weren't shaking like her voice was.

"Soon?" A.Y. asked, his little brow furrowing. He may have been Tony and Pepper's son, but he still had the time sense of any other three-year-old; that is to say, not much.

"Yes, soon." _I hope …_

"Oh," A.Y. and Anne Marie said in unison. They added nothing further, and Pepper was able to say one final goodnight, turn off the light, close the door and quick-walk to her own room before she started hyperventilating.

There was a lot she wasn't telling them. JARVIS had traced Tony's last known whereabouts to somewhere near where Libya's western border met Tunisia and Algeria, a particularly blank spot in the northern Sahara desert. Thor and Bruce still hadn't heard from him. Nor had Nick, who promised he'd talk to his contacts in the U.S.-friendly Libyan and Tunisian governments. (The Algerians, embroiled in year three of a nasty civil war, weren't likely to be much help.) Nor had Rhodey, who likewise assured her he'd make inquiries. The supervisor she'd talked to at the al-Jawf solar farm was still excited about Tony's surprise visit, but had no idea where he'd headed afterward, except roughly west.

Pepper worked her way through one tissue and started on a second. This had always been her great fear after she and Tony had begun a romantic relationship – that one day he'd fly off in that suit of his to pound some justice into somebody, and never come back. But years had passed, they'd married, had kids, pursued their personal and corporate dreams together, and the fear had slowly drifted into the background.

Now it was back, and had brought company.

And what could she do about it, sitting here in Malibu with a runny nose? Not a blessed thing. All that was left to her was to wait, take care of Jamey and Anne Marie and A.Y., keep an eye on Stark Industries and … wait some more. It wasn't like she could hop over to Africa and rescue him herself.

Unless …

Before Pepper knew it, she was down in Tony's basement lab, staring at Iron Man Model 7V. V for Virginia. He'd built the pink-and-silver armored suit for her before their wedding, trained her in its use, and flown next to her all the way to their honeymoon in Baja California over seven years ago. She still took it out for a spin a few times a year; despite popping out three children, she'd been able to keep herself in good enough shape that it still fit her.

But she'd never flown it a third of the way around the world. It had no armaments, and the armor wasn't as thick as that on Tony's current Mark XI. She didn't have the option of riding the Stark jet most of the way, as said plane was sitting in Zurich at the moment. Besides, who would take care of the kids while she ran off? Natalie wasn't due back in California until Monday. She could call Rupert, their nanny, claim an emergency and … no. Not fair to him or his charges. Worse yet, what if _she_ never made it back either? They'd be the world's richest orphans, but she knew how rough losing his parents had been on Tony. And he'd been a teenager; Jamey, their oldest, hadn't even turned seven yet …

It would be totally irrational to hop into that suit and take it into a potentially hostile situation for a rescue mission.

Rational or not, she was still thinking about it. Not good.

She took a deep breath, held it, let it out slowly, and forced herself to turn and walk back upstairs. He'd only been AWOL for a few hours; it wouldn't even qualify as a missing-persons case at this point. Now was _not_ the time to freak out. "Get a grip, girl," she grumbled to herself as she made a very dry, two-olive martini.

Still, it took two of them before she felt calm enough to try going to sleep. And through the night, she was awakened by dreams she couldn't remember.

* * *

><p>Saturday's sunlight didn't improve the look of the situation. But Pepper did her best to keep it to herself, for the sake of the kids. They didn't need to bear a portion of her dark burdens. Besides, taking part in their watercolor painting and dinosaur fights, keeping Anne Marie from trying to ride Dummy, taking them to the beach and a hamburger stand, and showing Jamey how to research for her ELA paper for second grade (one page about any large man-made object – Jamey had chosen the Golden Gate Bridge) made the time go easier than it would've if she'd had nothing to ponder but Tony's elusive whereabouts.<p>

Nonetheless, her masquerade wasn't perfect. "You look sad, Mommy," Jamey commented when the twins were momentarily elsewhere.

"Do I?" she responded in a way that she hoped sounded casual.

Jamey nodded gravely. "Are you worried about Daddy?"

She forced a smile. "Mommy always worries about Daddy. It's part of her job."

"Oh." Jamey thought about this for a moment. "But you probably shouldn't. No one can beat Daddy." And she walked off.

Pepper was left with her mouth hanging open, wishing she had that kind of confidence. Of course, Jamey only heard about the victories, whereas Pepper knew about the near-run events that led to them. But still.

She got through the day – dinner, baths, movie, bedtime, another explanation (this time to Annie Marie) that Daddy would be home "soon." But there was still no word from Tony – or from Nick or Rhodey or anyone else. She thought about another two-martini evening, decided that way lay madness, but couldn't think of a useful alternative.

And so she found herself back in the basement, staring at the Model 7V again and thinking the unthinkable …

Her PDA went off. She looked at the display – Rhodey. "Hello?"

"Pepper – back away from that suit. _Not_ a good idea."

"Wait, how did you know I w …" She paused, then covered the receiver and looked up at the ceiling. "JARVIS …"

"It seemed appropriate to take precautions in order to keep you from making a foolish decision, Ms. Stark," the computer answered.

She sighed heavily. "Tattletale."

"If you say so, madam."

She shook her head. "Okay, James, I'll stay put. But what am I supposed to do?"

"Just that, girl. Stay. Put."

"Easy for you to say. It's not your spouse who's disappeared into BFE and left you with three kids and no way to explain to them that Daddy's …" She couldn't continue. She slumped into a chair and spent the next several minutes sobbing, as the terror she'd felt for two days finally came pouring out. She heard Rhodey making soothing sounds, but they didn't really register, let alone help.

Finally, once the tears ran out, Rhodey broke in for real. "Pepper, you got it together enough to do me a favor?"

"Sure, whatever," she groaned, not really caring.

"I need you to send me what information you have on Tony's last known location." A vaguely familiar voice could be heard in the background, but was too indistinct to identify. "In fact, send me everything you have about his itinerary. Whatever you got."

She nodded. "JARVIS?" she rasped.

"Sent, madam."

"Thanks." She returned to the call. "Let me know when you get it, James."

"Um … ah, just showed up in my inbox. Thank you."

"Anything else?"

"Yeah. Take care of those little ones, and _don't go anywhere_. As soon as I have intel, you're my first call." And with that, he hung up.

Pepper disconnected too, and resisted the urge to throw her BlackBerry across the room only because she was too drained to manage it. Instead, she trudged upstairs and, fully clothed, collapsed into bed for a fitful but dreamless sleep.

* * *

><p>It was the BlackBerry that woke her up. She opened one bleary eye just long enough to glance at the clock – 0532, it read. "Nghhm," she replied, and groped blindly toward the noise until she finally found it. "Hello?"<p>

It was Rhodey. "Hey – got someone here who wants to speak with you." A pause, a shuffling sound, and then …

"In my defense, I had no reason to believe I'd need backup on that flight …"

Pepper came instantly awake – and upright. "Tony?"

"Hey, Pep. You doing okay?"

"Tony …" she whined, not intending to but unable to stop it, or a new cascade of tears.

"I'm sorry I scared you, hon."

"Heh. I wasn't (gulp) scared."

Tony's voice went soft, and serious. "Pep, I didn't ask _if_ you were scared. I know you were. And … I'm sorry."

She sniffled twice before replying. "I forgive you. What happened?"

"Well … the thing about civil wars is they don't always stay put."

"I don't follow."

"Okay. My plan, after leaving al-Jawf, was to fly across Libya until just before I'd reach Algeria, then head due north, so I'd pass over Tunisia, Sardinia, Corsica and minimize my time over water. One thing I've never been able to make a suit do is float, after all. So I'm nearing the border, just south of this little town called Ghadames, I'm cruising at about 2,000 feet, ready to turn north – and this RPG smacks me right in the shoulder and sends me tumbling, tail over teakettle, right into a sand dune."

"Oh my …"

"That's a lot nicer than what _I_ said at the time. Well, I finally pull myself out of the sand, and there are about a dozen Berbers with Kalashnikovs surrounding me, with the most embarrassed expressions on their faces! Turns out they're more or less the good guys – Algerian freedom fighters in their civil war, trying to overthrow the Ouyahia regime – and since the secret police were snooping around their usual hideouts, they snuck over the border into Libya. Easy for them to do: the Berbers on either side of the border are thick as thieves … no … no, Farid, I wasn't saying you were a thief! It's just an American expression! … sorry about that. Anyway, one of them, teenage boy, heard me coming, thought I was an Algerian drone and took his best shot. That kid's got a future in ballistics if he wants to pursue it"

"Are you okay?"

"Mostly – my shoulder looks like a ripe eggplant, but otherwise I was just shook up and a little sprained in a few places. Once they realized who I was, they couldn't stop apologizing – they're big fans. Fed me, clothed me, offered me a few potential wives – don't worry, I turned them down – and were generally hospitable. A couple of them even knew English, which spared them my atrocious French. Only problem was, Sharpshooter got me in the _left_ shoulder …"

"… which is where the transponder's located," Pepper finished for him with a groan.

"And the radio linkup. So I couldn't communicate. Remind me when I get back to build _two_ of those into the Mark XII, in different locations so this doesn't happen again."

"That, and have JARVIS monitor the transponder 24/7 – regardless of the mission."

"Agreed. I needed a couple of days to recupe from my, er, crash landing, but as soon as I could manage the trip, Farid – he's the leader of this band of merry men – and a couple of his boys and I hopped into their old Land Rover to head into Ghadames and find a phone. And just as we hit the city limits, who meets us but Rhodey, Thor and Bruce. Rhodey had been in Brussels – did you know he was in Brussels?"

"No … as a matter of fact, I didn't."

"Big NATO powwow, just wrapped up yesterday. Whereupon he zipped over to the chalet in his War Machine suit to see me, only to find I wasn't there, but Bruce and Thor were. So he got the info from you, then they took _my_ plane here to start searching for me. Easiest search _they_ ever did," he added with a laugh.

Pepper felt all her muscles start to relax simultaneously. She caught herself before she fell over or wet herself, but it was close. "Oh, Tony, I'm just glad you're all right …"

"All in a day's work. We're planning to head back to the chalet and get a good night's sleep before returning to L.A. tomorrow – but if you need me back sooner …"

"No, no – as long as I know you're okay, take your time …"

"Oooo-kay. But no, don't worry – I should be home tomorrow afternoon. Tell Natalie what happened and have her hold the fort until I get to the office."

"No problem." They gave each other their endearments, and Tony rang off to catch his plane. Pepper let out a long sigh, wiped her eyes, blew her nose … and heard footsteps coming up the hall.

Jamey, in a pink nightgown and slippers, looked in the room. "Morning, Mommy. Who were you talking to?"

Pepper smiled. "Oh, that was Daddy calling."

"Oh. Is he okay?"

Pepper smiled. "Yeah, Jamey. He's fine."

"Is he still taking us to Legoland today?"

Pepper had to think for a second. Oh, yeah – Legoland. "No, pumpkin – he won't be back until tomorrow."

"Awww – I wanted to go to Legoland today!" Jamey whined, then stomped off down the hall. She didn't hear her mom snort with laughter and collapse back onto the bed.


	13. 16 June 2019: Father's Day Surprise

Vignette #13

16 June 2019 – Father's Day Surprise

* * *

><p>Tony did <em>not<em> want to get up on Sunday.

It had been a busy week, starting the previous Sunday with Jamey's eighth birthday party. Jamey had had about fifteen of her bestest friends over to celebrate, and while her friends were pretty conscientious (for grade-schoolers), there had still been a mess and a half for the maid service to clean up the next day. It didn't help that most of the gifts, including the big one from Mom and Dad, involved Jamey's latest hobby: model rocketry. So the mess extended to the yard, where the landscaping service had been required to lay down some new sod in spots.

Of course, Tony had been forced to let Pepper deal with the landscapers on Wednesday, since he'd been called away to cope with a potential meteor strike. He and Thor had teamed up to handle it – Tony catching up with the falling rock and blasting it into small pieces before it in turn blasted a couple of small towns in Colorado, Thor to uncover its originator (Loki, of course, who'd done it just for laughs) and give his bratty little brother the thrashing he so richly deserved. Then it was back to the office on Thursday for some tricky negotiations with palladium suppliers … only to head out again and spend much of Friday and Saturday rustling Mexican drug cartels. And he still owed Steve Rogers a call; Cap and Nick Fury were trying to get the whole team together for a strategy session, only it was proving difficult lately to find a time when more than three Avengers were free at once ...

He'd gotten home from Sinaloa around 1:45 Sunday morning, and after extensive time in the suit it always took him a while before he could settle down enough to sleep. Now it was 5:40, he'd had maybe two hours' shuteye. Yeah, it was Father's Day – whatever. He really, _really_ didn't want to get up.

But a newly minted eight-year-old can be very insistent. "Come on, Dad!" she said again, shaking his shoulder.

"Unh … Dad's tired, Jamey …"

"Dad, you'll miss the surprise!"

"Don't like surprises. Like sleep. Sleepy sleepy sleep …"

"Please, Dad?" Jamey sighed and decided on another tactic. "Dad, it won't take long. Then you can go back to sleep."

That got Tony to open one eye. "Promise?"

"Promise." Jamey held up a pinky.

Tony excavated one of his own from under the covers, and they pinky-swore. Then with a series of groans, he levered himself up from the bed – first sitting, then (once he was able to keep his head from lolling) standing.

"Come on, Dad, let's _go_." Jamey took his hand and began dragging him toward the bedroom door.

"I'm coming, I'm coming," Tony mumbled as he let her pull him along. On the way, they passed the door to the master bathroom, and he briefly caught sight of himself in the mirror. _Where did all those gray hairs come from? Better do something about that …_

They got to the foyer to find Pepper and five-year-old A.Y. already there. Pepper was in her bathrobe, which at least made Tony feel less conspicuous in his boxer shorts and Black Rebel Motorcycle Club T-shirt. "Good morning, Tony."

"G'morning … yeah. Wish I'd lived to see it."

"Maybe this will help." She smiled and handed him a demitasse of espresso.

"Thx." Tony took the cup, then looked around. "Where's Anne Marie?"

"Dead to the world," A.Y. said, then stifled a yawn before adding, "that's what Mommy said."

"I could _not_ wake her up," Pepper elaborated, shaking her head.

"Her loss. Come _on_!" Jamey resumed pulling on Tony's arm.

She led him (and them) out to the patio, where four lawn chairs had been set up facing the Pacific Ocean. Tony crashed gratefully in one of them. Pepper, after helping A.Y. climb up into one, sat down next to Tony and rubbed his neck with one hand.

"So what's going on?" Tony asked.

"I can't tell you. It would spoil the surprise." On the other side of Pepper, A.Y. giggled.

"Surprise? Since when do I like surprises?"

"Just watch. You'll see."

"Mmph."

For a minute, there was nothing much to see – a clear sky slowly being lit by the sun rising in the east, a few gulls circling lazily and looking for an early breakfast. Then Tony heard a muted roar behind him, as if a miniature jet plane were passing overhead. Then another, and another, and another … "What was that?" he asked, now fully awake and turning to look.

"Watch," Pepper insisted, motioning him to look west again.

All Tony could see was a few dozen black specks, racing away toward the west. Then suddenly, two of them turned north and began leaving streaks of exhaust across the sky, as if they were writing in some demented version of Morse Code. Below them, two more specks made hard rights and started doing the same. Then a bundle of others dove up or down, leaving more streaks.

Tony looked confused. "Skywriting ..."

"Mm-hmm," Pepper replied. "Jamey and I got the permit from the county on Wednesday, while you were out meteor hunting. The rest is all the stuff you taught her about programmable rockets over the last few months.

By now, Tony was staring open-mouthed at the sky, as half a mile above him and a few miles out to sea, the exhaust from twenty-eight model rockets finished spelling out in block letters:

T O N Y . S T A R K

B E S T . D A D . E V E R !

He heard clicking noises as Pepper captured the display on her digital camera, but he didn't – couldn't – look away.

Jamey came running up to Tony. "Did you see? Did you see?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I saw."

"It's a pity you don't like surprises …," Pepper began puckishly.

"What are you talking about?" Tony pulled Jamey up and sat her on his lap. "I love surprises!"

"Happy Father's Day, Dad," Jamey said, hugging him around the neck.

A.Y. had drifted over, too, and gave Tony a squeeze. "Happy Father's Day."

"Thanks, guys," Tony said softly as he hugged them back. And then they all watched quietly as the letters dissipated in the morning air.


	14. 25 December 2021: One Step at a Time

Vignette #14

25 December 2021 – One Step at a Time

_(Author's note: this chapter is dedicated to my son Sean and his continued recovery from Leigh's disease. Keep up the good work, Bruiser ...)_

* * *

><p>It was Christmas morning at the Stark residence – and as usual, Tony had spared no expense. The area surrounding the nine-foot-tall Douglas fir was inundated with well-wrapped presents. Or had been fifteen minutes ago; now, it was inundated with <em>unwrapped<em> presents, and the boxes, bags and bins that had once contained them.

"Okay, I'm gonna open this box now," Anthony Yensin Stark declared.

"Wait a second, A.Y.," his twin sister Anne Marie cautioned. "Let Jamey finish with hers first."

Tony smiled, patted Anne Marie on the shoulder, then wadded up another chunk of removed wrapping paper and shot a free throw into the garbage bag Pepper was holding one-handed. In the other hand was a half-eaten chocolate-covered pretzel, from a box of the same from Bloomingdale's that Tony had bought her for Christmas. (Okay, technically Natalie Rushman had bought it – on Tony's card, at Tony's behest. That's what personal assistants were for; close enough.)

"It'll just be a second," Jamey assured A.Y. – a debatable assertion, as it was a large box she was working on. But finally she got enough of the paper off to read the contents. "A racing bike! Oh, and it's not assembled – I get to put it together!"

"It was all I could do to keep your father from breaking out the tools …," Pepper drawled.

"Thank you! It's just what I wanted!" Jamey hugged Pepper, then Tony, before asking the latter, "can I build it later today?"

"Sure thing, kiddo – but use the lab downstairs. We don't want lubricant on the carpet."

"I know …," she said in her best put-upon ten-year-old voice.

A.Y., meanwhile, had needed no further prompting. He ripped the paper off his gift, to find a model engineering set. "Coolness! This is just like the one Jamey has!"

"Actually, that one's the latest version," Tony corrected. "It's a little bigger, more parts."

"Great – thanks!" A.Y. looked at Anne Marie. "Bet you're jealous …"

"Ha," she replied flatly. Anne Marie was surrounded by exactly what she'd wanted for Christmas: books, books and more books, including her own copies of _The Invention of Hugo Cabret_, _A Young Person's Guide to U.S. History_ and (so she'd stop bogarting Dad's copies) the entire Ender Wiggin series. She was quite content to leave the inventing and tinkering to … well, to everyone else in the family except Mom.

Tony popped another wrapping-paper shot into the bag, then surveyed the remaining wreckage. "I … think that's everything. Time to start putting stuff away, troops."

"Oh, wait!" A.Y. declared.

"Did you spot one we missed?" Pepper asked.

"No, it's … um … I've got a surprise, but … it's in my room. I'll go get it." Quick as he could, he grabbed his crutches, stood up and levered himself out of the sunken living room and up the hall.

* * *

><p><em>It had been an abnormally quiet June day at Stark Industries when Tony got the call. The number was Pepper's cell phone. "Tony, we've got an emergency."<em>

_Immediately, his blood froze. It had been a long time since he'd heard that note of panic in Pepper's voice. Clearly, this was no garden-variety problem. "What happened?"_

"_We were walking down to the beach, and A.Y. and Anne Marie ran ahead, and you know that cliff before the turn in the path … and I called out to him to be careful, but he didn't listen and he … he went over the …" Pepper started to hyperventilate._

_Tony couldn't blame her – he knew that cliff, and would've fenced the portion of the path near it himself if it hadn't been public land. (He'd been tempted anyway.) It was about a forty-foot drop from that spot down to a rocky patch above the beach … "Pep, take a deep breath, hold it … hold it … have you called 9-1-1?"_

_Exhale. "Yes. They're sending the ambulance right now ..." She was clearly making an effort to keep herself under control._

"_Okay, good. Did they say where they'd be taking him?"_

"_I … I think they said UCLA-Reagan."_

"_Okay, I'm on my way there. How's he doing? Are you with him right now?"_

"_Yes. But Tony …" The hysteria began to creep back into her voice. "Tony, he says he can't feel his legs!"_

* * *

><p>"<em>Well … what can be done, Sam?" Tony asked dully. He and Pepper – and A.Y. – had just been given the doctor's findings. A.Y. had landed on the rocks below the cliff flat on his back. When he hit, a particularly sharp stone had broken through to knock one of his lumbar vertebrae out of alignment. Far enough that the bone had severed his spine.<em>

"_You know, Tony, if any other parent were to ask me that question, I'd be inclined to say 'nothing can be done.' But if there are two people on earth that can come up with a solution, I'd think it would be you and I." Dr. Samuel Bielecki knew whereof he spoke. Before joining the staff at UCLA-Reagan Medical Center, the neurosurgeon had been at Bethesda Naval Hospital, and was one of Dr. Jonah Goldman's assistants on the Pegasus Project. Pegasus had led to a new generation of fully operational replacement limbs for amputees, ones that linked directly to the patients' nervous systems. (And secondarily, to a lucrative new Medical Division at Stark Industries.)_

_Still, re-attaching a spinal column was another order of magnitude up from attaching a prosthetic leg to already-functional nerves … "Well … there's gotta be something we can do …" He glanced over at a red-eyed Pepper, who nodded and squeezed his hand._

"_Dad?"_

"_Yeah, son?"_

"_You know the neural connectors you use in the prost … prostheses, right?"_

"_Yeah …" Tony thought he saw where A.Y. might be going with that question. Granted, the kid was only seven, but he was Tony and Pepper's kid, smart for his age …_

_A.Y. made his hands into fists, then put them together. "What if you connected two of them, like back-to-back?"_

_Tony's eyes widened. If he hasn't been so shell-shocked, he might have thought of it himself. Instead, his suddenly paraplegic son had spotted it. Translating the neural signals to electronic ones, and back again … "Ummm … it's not quite that simple. But … yeah, that's not a bad place to start ..."_

_Sam began musing aloud. "I'm no engineer, but that sounds like something that could work. It would have to be small enough to fit into the spinal column, but have enough processing power built in to …"_

"_No."_

"_What?"_

"_What's wrong, Dad?"_

_Tony was silent for a few seconds, then smiled. "Nothing's wrong, A.Y. I think … wait, I need to check some things." He grabbed his Stark FutureDesk tablet computer and moved closer to A.Y.'s bed, so they could both see the display, then motioned Sam to watch over his shoulder. "I've got an idea that might work – but I'm going to need you guys' help …"_

"_Tell me there's hope, Tony," Pepper pleaded._

"_Oh, there's hope, all right," Tony assured her, then looked at their son. "Now … let's work on getting you back on your feet, dude."_

* * *

><p>Pepper looked toward the hallway where A.Y. had exited, and sighed heavily.<p>

Tony waded through the discarded wrappings to sit beside her. "What's wrong, Pep?" He ruffled the hair at the back of her neck.

She sighed again. "It's just … every time I see him going around on those crutches or … or in the wheelchair, it's like I …" She couldn't go on. Instead she pulled out a tissue and began dabbing at her eyes.

Tony reached an arm around and pulled her into a hug. "Pep, he's gonna be okay. Look at the progress he's made in just six months. He's up and around, he almost never needs the wheelchair, he's … he's talking about how he wants to go back to school." They had made the decision, shortly after the operation, that A.Y. would have as much time as necessary to spend on possible recovery – including home instruction until further notice. He was a Stark; they had no doubt he'd be able to keep up with his academics.

"But how long will it take? How long until my baby is … is normal again?"

Now Tony sighed. Because there was no way to answer that question. No one had ever been in A.Y.'s position, because before A.Y. there _was_ no recovery from having one's spinal column severed. Furthermore, all of the replacement limbs Stark Industries had built were external attachments for adults, people who had stopped growing. Putting something _inside_, inside a growing boy, was a whole different kettle of fish.

And then there was the "my baby" part. Jamey was very much "daddy's girl," but A.Y. (for all that he loved building things) had largely taken after Pepper, right up to the strawberry-blond hair. (Anne Marie … they couldn't figure out who she took after. A bit of both, wrapped around a whole lot of doing-my-own-thing.) Having something so terrible happen to the child she felt closest to cut Pepper to the heart. Over and over again …

Jamey came over to hug Pepper from the other side. "He's going to get better, Mom. Don't be sad. You watch."

"You watch," Anne Marie repeated from her fortress of books, and glanced toward the hallway herself.

* * *

><p><em>In the end, Tony, with A.Y.'s and Dr. Bielecki's (and several other people's) help, had come up with a solution. The processing power, electrical power and overall hardware needed for a spinal implant could just barely be packed into and around the hole within one lumbar vertebra … of a full-grown adult. A.Y.'s were smaller, though, so they had to take a drastic step – hollow out the vertebra that had caused the problem, and hope the bone healed and grew around the implant. Furthermore, the juice to run the implant – a 5mm-diameter Stark Industries arc reactor, the smallest they made – was not only outside the spine, it was at skin level for both easy access and heat dissipation. That meant a plastic access plate on his lower back, which had to be made waterproof so the poor kid could take a bath. And to add one more problem on top of all the rest, UCLA-Reagan needed special permission from the FDA to put such a foreign object inside A.Y. Tony'd called in favors by the handful to make <em>that_ happen._

_The operation – all fourteen hours of it, once you added in reconnecting muscles, tendons and everything else that had torn loose in the fall or needed to be moved out of the way to put in the hardware – was a success. With a big dirty asterisk attached._

"_Tony, we're now finished with the easy stuff." This was from Dr. Jonah Goldman, the former Pegasus Project lead M.D., whom Dr. Bielecki had called in to assist in the orthopedic aspects of the surgery. It was the day after the operation, a week after A.Y.'s accident, and Tony was sitting with the six doctors who'd taken part._

"_The easy stuff?" Tony asked, incredulous._

"_Well, the hard stuff for us. But this has, believe it or not, been the easy part for you. You've got a lot of work ahead of you – you, your wife, and most of all your son."_

"_Ah. I get it. I think."_

"_You've seen that Anthony can feel his legs and feet again, that he can move them a little. Clearly the new … spinal linkage is working. But now he has to learn how to use his legs and feet again. He had months in the womb, then years outside it, to do that. Now … now he'll have to start from scratch. He has an advantage – his brain remembers how to do it. But now he'll have to get the bones, the muscles, the tendons to obey those orders from his brain again."_

"_Well … that doesn't sound too difficult. I mean, as long as the signals are getting through …"_

"_I didn't say 'difficult,' Tony. I said 'hard'."_

_Tony looked around the table. Everyone else seemed to be following this but him. "What am I missing here?"_

"_Because it's not just a matter of getting the signals. It's a matter of working with Anthony for several hours every day, seven days a week, you and Mrs. Stark and whoever else you bring in helping him move his legs, stretching and manipulating them in a way that you and I don't have to do because we get that exercise and that reinforcement of our muscle memory simply by walking and sitting and … and living. Everything involved is fairly simple, so it won't be _difficult_. But it will be _hard_, because you're gonna have to take a big chunk out of your life and spend it on this – with no guarantee that your son will have a full recovery, or any recovery."_

_Dr. Goldman paused and shook his head. "I've seen people have nervous breakdowns while dealing with far less serious injuries to their children. I've seen couples divorce under the stress. I've seen folks become addicts because they drug themselves to try to get through the days. And I want you to know this ahead of time, Tony. Because there are going to be some dark times ahead for you and Pepper, for your daughters, and for your son too. You will need to be strong in ways you never knew existed – and I say that as someone who knows your bio better than most. I want you to be prepared for that. 'Cause this will _not _be fun."_

_Everyone in the room let the silence stretch._

_Finally, Tony spoke softly. "Doc, he's my son. I'll do whatever it takes."_

"_That's the spirit." And the old doctor finally cracked a smile._

* * *

><p><em>Dr. Goldman was right, for the most part. Once A.Y. was discharged, Tony and Pepper started working alternating days at Stark headquarters, so somebody would always be at home, working with A.Y. That changed to alternating half-days, as a physical therapist was hired to be with him and work him like crazy every morning. Pretty soon, they settled into a pattern, but the pattern usually included having no energy for anything by early evening. Jamey and Anne Marie had to pick up some slack around the house – doing chores and making sure they had their own stuff laid out for the next day, things that Mom and Dad had always done for them before.<em>

_But he was wrong on one point. After a while, it did start to become fun, sort of. And the person most responsible for that was A.Y._

_Day after day, he endured all the exercises – those he could do and those he had to have done for him – usually with a smile. He pushed himself (and occasionally his parents) as far as he could, rested, then started back in again. He devoured books about people like Dennis Byrd and Wilma Rudolph who had overcome terrible disabilities, and shared bits of them with everyone around him. More times than he could count, Tony came home to a story from Pepper about how A.Y. had lifted her spirits; there were also a few times when Pepper arrived and got the same from Tony._

_In addition to physical therapy duties, Tony found another way to contribute – by tinkering, of course. (That, and giving himself a crash course in physiology.) A programmable electronic pedal exerciser, an adjustable framework for holding someone who couldn't support their own weight upright while using a treadmill, range-of-motion robotic manipulators for ankles, for knees, for hips, even for toes – all these things came pouring out of the famous basement lab. Some of them not only got used by A.Y., they were also replicated for Stark Industries Medical, usually with a sticky note attached saying something like "think there might be a market for this? – T.S."_

_And slowly, the effects began to show. A.Y. moved from a wheelchair to a gait trainer, from a gait trainer to a reverse walker, from a reverse walker to crutches. Weekly follow-up visits to UCLA-Reagan became bi-weekly, then monthly. As fall came, he started venturing outside again under his own power, occasionally to the consternation of his parents. He kept up with his studies at home, with Anne Marie bringing home extra copies of the homework so he didn't have to worry about falling behind. He even took the time to write some letters – to the Malibu City Council, asking them to build a fence along the clifftop to prevent further misadventures (they voted to do so), and to the FDA in support of approval for clinical trials of what was now being called the Stark Implanted Spinal Linkage (still pending)._

_And somewhere in there, he also managed to read about twenty novels, most of them written for much higher grade levels. Not to mention being a general annoyance to his sisters, the birthright of any little brother worth his salt. (Though he did tone it down after he got a bloody nose – his reward from Anne Marie for purposely tripping her with a crutch.) But his primary focus was on one goal and one goal alone._

_He was going to get better. Come hell or high water._

* * *

><p>Tony continued to comfort Pepper as Jamey and Anne Marie began breaking down the empty boxes for recycling, each glancing at the hallway every so often. Once, Anne Marie looked that way for several seconds, then smiled and nodded – but thankfully her parents didn't notice.<p>

They did, however, notice when he said, "okay, I'm back."

Pepper looked up – and gasped.

Anthony Yensin Stark was walking back to the living room – somewhat unsteadily, but without any outside support. He trailed one hand along the hallway wall until it ended, then simply held his hands slightly away from his body for balance. Coming to the steps leading down to the sunken living room, he took them one at a time – holding one foot out into empty space, then bending the opposite knee so his foot landed on the next step …

Pepper's mouth was hanging open as she made little strangled squeaking noises. But Jamey and Anne Marie were grinning like the cats who'd caught the canary. And Tony noticed. "Girls … something you want to share?"

Anne Marie giggled. Jamey spoke up for both of them. "A.Y.'s been asking us to help him practice. He didn't want you to know yet …"

"… 'Cause he wanted it to be a surprise," Anne Marie finished. "For Christmas!"

A.Y. reached the bottom step, let out a sigh of relief, and said "Surprise."

The noise Pepper made couldn't be translated into letters. She sprang up from her seat, tears streaming down her face, and ran to her son, enveloping him in a hug that threatened to cause both of them to fall over. She rocked back and forth for a couple of minutes, until finally she regained enough composure to let him free.

A.Y. smiled at his mom, accepted a high five from Anne Marie and a (gentle) fist bump from Jamey. Then he shuffled over to his dad, who'd watched the whole thing with a huge grin. "I'm doing it. I'm getting better."

"Knew you could." Then Tony, still beaming, stood up, took A.Y.'s hand and gave it a firm shake. The kind of handshake a man gives a fellow man. "Knew you could."


	15. 19 February 2026: Table Talk

Vignette #15

19 February 2026 – Table Talk

* * *

><p>"Mm. These are delicious." It was so nice, Tony thought, to be able to sit down and enjoy a meal with his whole family for once. (The fact that it was chile rellenos didn't hurt either.)<p>

"Mm-hmm," agreed A.Y. Being eleven and a growing boy, he was already most of the way through his first helping before anyone else had gotten a decent start.

"Well, thanks go to the delivery service," Pepper said between mouthfuls. "And to Jamey, as she suggested adding these to the list we give them."

"Good choice, kiddo!" Tony said, nodding across the table at Jamey.

"Thanks, Dad. Oh, I have a big announcement!"

Anne Marie, Jamey's younger sister and A.Y.'s twin, piped up. "I know! You built a miniature vacuum tube to ferry food straight from the fridge to A.Y.'s mouth so he can gorge more efficiently!"

"Jealous," A.Y. drawled before taking his next bite. Which may have had some basis in fact – while A.Y. seemed to eat enough for three boys yet stayed Pepper-skinny, Anne Marie watched her calories, took small portions, and still couldn't shake a certain pudginess.

Anne Marie opened her mouth to return fire, but Pepper put a placating hand on her shoulder. "Ding, ding. End of the round – return to your corners." Then, leaning close to Anne Marie's ear, she added in a whisper, "don't start nothing, and there won't be nothing." Anne Marie made a face, but nonetheless stood down.

"As I was saying …," Jamey declared, giving her little sister a disapproving look.

"Wait, Jamey," Pepper interrupted. "Your father just got home a few hours ago – we don't even know how things in Honduras went."

"You're right, Mom, you're right. How did it go, Dad?"

"Ah, it went fine. Typical military coup: badly planned, even more badly executed. It would have taken eight hours to get rid of the junta, except the citizens themselves were so ticked at the military that it almost turned into civil war. Most of my time was spent calming the grass-roots uprising down so that they wouldn't be in the line of fire when we took out the coup. Funny thing was, by the time I'd gotten that taken care of, the coup leaders had realized they were in over their heads, and they and the elected officials were ready to talk things out. All I did from there was make a call to the president of Mexico to see if he was willing to mediate."

"Was he?" Anne Marie asked. She loved international politics – more than most seventh-graders, anyway.

"Oh yeah. So in all, I didn't have to fire a shot – and was only shot at a couple of times. Every mission should be so easy." He took another forkful of relleno, then clapped his hands together and turned to Jamey. "Now. Big announcement, you said."

"Yes. Okay …" She looked around the table at her family. "I've decided where I'm going to college!"

There were appreciative noises around the table. Although Jamey wouldn't turn fifteen for another few months, she was already in her senior year of high school, having blown through her academic responsibilities almost as easily as her father had. Between her name and her grades, she was heavily recruited by pretty much every engineering school in the country, had visited almost two dozen, and had applied to (and been accepted by) twelve.

"You know, we need to do this right," Anne Marie added. "Press conference."

A.Y. grinned. "Yeah, and we can have the school caps sitting in front of her, like the football players do …"

"Cerrado," Jamey told them, rolling her eyes. It was the latest trend among southern California teens to use Spanish terms as slang; _cerrado_ (meaning "closed") took the place of "shut up." "Seriously, I know where I want to go."

"So … Cal Tech?" Tony inquired. Jamey shook her head no.

"UCLA?" Pepper tried. Another head shake.

"Berkeley?"

"Stanford?"

"MIT?"

"Hogwarts!" A.Y. declared.

"You're the one who wants to go to Hogwarts!" Jamey replied.

"True. But seriously, sis – where _are_ you going?"

Jamey smiled, and drew the silence out to an unconscionable length before finally saying, "Maryland."

"Whoa!" Tony remarked, surprised.

Pepper was more chagrined than surprised. "Jamey – that's on the other side of the country!"

Tony placed his hand on his wife's. "Pep, I went to college on the other side of the country …"

"And developed a drinking habit at 16," she added archly.

Jamey adopted a put-upon look. "Mom, I'm not going to become an alcoholic, I promise!"

"She's just doing her job, Jamey – worrying. So, why College Park?"

"Well … partly _because_ it's on the other side of the country, and it's not anyone in the family's alma mater. I want to be able to stretch my wings a little, forge my own path. They have one of the best engineering schools in the country, especially aerospace engineering, which is what I want to major in. They work all the time with the Goddard Space Center. I'll be right near Washington, D.C., which will let me keep up with the political climate. And … I did note that they were one of the few places, Dad, where someone didn't go out of their way to hit you up for money …"

"Yeah. That kind of surprised me – pleasantly." At most of the schools he and Jamey had visited, somebody from the administration had sniffed around about the possibility of Tony endowing a chair or helping with a building drive. "Remember that guy at Rensselaer?"

Jamey laughed out loud. "Oh! He was _so_ obnoxious …"

Pepper hadn't stopped worrying yet, though. "Is she going to be safe three thousand miles from home?" she asked Tony.

"Actually, Pep, I think she will. How many friends do we have in D.C.?"

"A lot," Pepper acknowledged reluctantly.

"And I'm sure Aunt Natalie will be keeping tabs on me," Jamey added. "I can't imagine she wouldn't." Three years ago, Natalie Rushman – now Natasha Bryan, officially – and her husband Luther had moved back to Washington: Luther to accept an endowed chair at Georgetown, Natalie to take over Stark Industries' lobbying office (and work with S.H.I.E.L.D. as Nick Fury transitioned into as close as he would ever come to retirement). Natalie would probably be ticked if Jamey was in the area and she _didn't_ get a chance to mother-hen her a little.

"Well …"

"What are you thinking, Pep – a bodyguard?"

"Actually, yes, I was."

"Please don't, Mom. It's gonna be hard enough to fit in when I'm younger than everyone else. It'll be impossible if I have an ex-Green Beret looking over my shoulder all the time. Besides, I _can_ defend myself." That was true enough – Tony had started her in martial arts classes almost as soon as she hit puberty (figuring that if she ever had to deal with boys like _he_ had once been, he wanted her prepared). She'd attained enough proficiency in Wing Chun that she was occasionally asked to assist newer students at the dojo.

Tony intervened before things got more heated. "Okay, hold the drama. Here's my thinking: no bodyguard –" He held up a hand before Pepper could reply. "– for the time being. But if there's any attempt to kidnap or otherwise threaten you, at all, we'll reconsider. Reasonable?" He looked at Pepper and Jamey, both of whom nodded assent.

Pepper was resigned, but not thrilled. "Our oldest is leaving home …," she said sadly.

"It's going to be okay," Tony replied, taking her hand and giving it a squeeze.

"Mom, I'm not joining the French Foreign Legion," Jamey added. "I'll be around for holidays, breaks, summer unless I'm doing an internship somewhere."

"I know, I know (sniff)," Pepper replied.

"This is one of those 'when you have kids, you'll understand' things," Tony told Jamey.

"Got it," she replied with a nod.

"Well, Mom, you won't have to worry about me going somewhere far away to study engineering," A.Y. chipped in. "I'm thinking I should stay close to home, maybe Cal Tech or USC, what with this thing." He patted his lower back, specifically the access plate of the Stark Industries Implanted Spinal Linkage® that for the last four-plus years had been holding his spinal column together.

"Speaking of which, you haven't had any more blips, have you?" Tony asked. Twice back in November, A.Y. had found himself unable to use his legs for a few seconds. It turned out to be nothing more than the miniature arc reactor that powered the linkage running low on juice. Tony had hot-swapped it without a problem, but everyone had been a bit wary since.

"No problems. Which is why … well, I guess I have a big announcement too."

"You've decided to become a food taster for Carl's Jr.," Anne Marie quipped.

"He wishes," added Jamey.

"Girls …," Pepper said in her I'm-warning-you voice.

"What is it, dude?" Tony asked.

A.Y. took a deep breath before replying. "Mr. Marcos at school wants me to join the track and field team."

Various notes of surprise from around the table, until Tony cut through them. "Hey, how did this happen?"

"Well, yesterday in P.E. a few of the other boys were goofing around, so Mr. Hammaker made all of us run laps. No problem for me – I like running, so after two laps I was ahead of everyone else. I guess he told Mr. Marcos, so today _he_ asked me if I could run a few for him so he could time me. Afterward, he said I was a slow starter, but I kept up a good pace once I got going, and he needed a long-distance runner for the track team. You know, 5,000 meters, 10,000 meters …"

"So what did you tell him?" Pepper asked.

"I told him I'd talk to my parents about it. And then I showed him …" He tapped his lower back again. "He said he'd probably need you to sign a medical waiver or something."

Tony's brow furrowed. "Medical waiver? That sounds ominous …"

"Actually, I think it's pretty standard," Pepper replied. "Just protecting the school from legal liability, that sort of thing."

"So … can I?" A.Y.'s eyebrows went up hopefully.

"Eh, I dunno," Tony said with a frown.

Pepper turned to him. "If it were something like, like football or field hockey, I'd say no. But track is a non-contact sport. And he runs everyplace anyway …"

Tony screwed up his face. "You sure?"

Pepper nodded, then smiled proudly at their son. "Yeah. I'm sure."

Tony hesitated for a couple of seconds, then said, "oh, all right. After dinner, bring up the waiver form online and we'll sign it."

"All right!" A.Y. decided to celebrate immediately, by taking a third helping of rellenos.

Everyone around the table looked excited – with one exception, Tony noted. "Hey … Anne Marie. Something bothering you?"

"No. Well … no. Yes."

Tony suppressed a chuckle. "What's up, girl?"

"I …" She let out a long, somewhat theatrical sigh before going on. "It's just … well … I don't …"

"… know how to complete a sentence," A.Y., between bites, finished for her – and immediately wiped the smile off his face when he saw the glare his mother was giving him.

"It's okay, Anne Marie," Tony interjected. "Just let it out. If we have to, we'll edit it later."

"Okay. Um … I don't really … want to be an engineer when I grow up."

The silence was broken by Pepper shrugging and saying, "Then don't."

"Yeah. I've never made it a requirement," Tony added.

"I don't think anyone here expected you to be an engineer," Jamey said. "You've got different interests."

A.Y. was nodding. "Yeah, you like books and history and debating and stuff. That's cool too."

Anne Marie's relief was palpable. "I guess I just figured everyone else in the family is, so …"

Tony interrupted. "Wait – your mom isn't!"

"I was going to say!" Pepper replied. "I can talk a good game – but that's just because I've worked around engineers for over twenty-five years. And been married to one for fifteen. But I couldn't fix a faucet without written instructions."

"So what do you want to be?" Tony asked Anne Marie.

"Governor of California, probably," Jamey said – affectionately.

"No." She paused and smiled. "I'd rather be a senator. Plenty of work to do, but not so much blame from the voters."

Pepper smiled too, and put an arm around her daughter's shoulders. "Well, if anyone could do it, Anne Marie, you could."

"Thanks, Mom."

"Politics – that'll mean law school, probably," Tony mused. "You thinking Gould? Stanford?"

"Aunt Natalie's husband could probably help you get into Georgetown," Jamey volunteered.

"Wait, wait! Can't I finish seventh grade first?" Anne Marie said, laughing. Everyone else joined her.

"Well, the first thing you need to finish," Pepper told her, "is your dinner. 'Cause if you don't, A.Y. will eat your share of the peach cobbler I'm going to go pop in the oven." She got up to do just that.

"If his dad doesn't eat it first," Tony finished. He sat back in his chair and sighed contentedly, then looked over at Jamey. "So my daughter's gonna be a Terrapin."

"Yep. I'll have to get you a sweatshirt."

"I'd like that, thank you." Tony mused on that for a second. "That'd work. I look good in red."


	16. 6 July 2031: Podcast

Vignette #16

6 July 2031 – Podcast

_(Author's notes: I wanted a way to distinguish the voices in this chapter without having to resort to the usual method of setting things up as a transcript – starting each line with "JAMEY:" and the like. So, here's the setup …_ **all of Anne Marie's words are in bold face (since she's the host)**_, A.Y.'s are in italic_, and Jamey's are in normal type_. Hope it works._

_Also, a shout-out (in the form of a postscript) will go to the first person who figures out the significance of the name of Jamey's boyfriend, and sends me a note to that effect.)_

* * *

><p><strong>Okay, welcome to the July 6 edition of "The First Draft of History," recognized as Los Angeles County's most pretentiously-named podcast. We're coming to you live from Podcast Central –<strong>

_We're coming to you live from her bedroom, actually._

**Stop it, A.Y., you're spoiling the podcast magic.**

_Sowwy._

You know, this might be fun after all?

**Anywayyyy … I'm your ringmaster for the festivities, Anne Marie Stark, and our guests today –**

_Are being held here against their will! Help! Helllllp!_

**I'm going to regret this, aren't I?**

Don't be negative, Annie – you'll spoil the podcast magic.

**Don't you start – you're supposed to be the mature one. My guests today – if I don't strangle them first – are my dear older sister Jamey –**

Hi, podcast audience!

– **and my twin brother A.Y.**

_Thank you, thank you very much. You're too kind._

Ain't that the truth?

**We're taking advantage of Jamey being home to have some valuable sibling time here on the pod. And to offer public congratulations on her graduation from the University of Maryland's A. James Clark School of Engineering, with a Bachelor's degree in both Aerospace Engineering AND Computer Engineering, magna cum laude – which is Latin for "really smart chica." Loud, clamorous applause, all rise and hail the great Jamey!**

_(trumpet fanfare noise)_

Aw, shucks, it weren't nothin' …

_That's not what Dad said when he was writing the checks._

Out of curiosity, Annie, how many people listen to these podcasts?

**I've got about forty subscribers.**

_All from our high school._

**Forty, nonetheless ...**

I'm just making sure that nothing I say is likely to end up on the L.A. Times home page.

_Yeah, as a future CEO she has to be careful about her public image._

Verdad!

**Yeah, let's talk about that. Did you and Dad – you listeners know who I mean by Dad – did you ever have conversations about how someday you'd be the CEO of Stark Industries? Was he pushing you in that direction?**

No … he never pushed me that way. I think we just both assumed that that's how things would work out. Stark Industries has always passed down from father to son, going back to the Gold Rush. This generation, the firstborn was a daughter, is all. It was never stated outright that, yes, this is the line of succession. But I think Dad and I both figured that as long as I was capable of handling it, that's what would happen. I've known it implicitly since I was … oh, twelve, maybe.

**Twelve? That young? Why don't I remember this?**

Probably 'cause you were in fifth grade. But sometimes I'd be helping him in his lab and he'd be talking about the company, and I'd say "well, maybe you should do so-and-such" and he'd say "maybe you can do that when you're in charge." Really casually, like we were talking about the weather or something. It was just … there.

_Just like I kind of always assumed that I'd be the R&D guy in the family – down in the basement with Igor and the big knife-switches._

You and me building the future, A.Y. Giving hefty donations to Annie as she runs for Congress.

**I'll set up a PayPal link later today. So you never felt pressured into that role, never thought to yourself, "I don't want to do this, I'd rather be a yak herder in Kazakhstan"?**

No! I always thought it would be fun to run a big company, and create stuff that helps people's lives. I still do. I'm pretty sure if I'd said "I don't want to be an engineer" when I was eleven, Dad and Mom would've been cool with it. I mean, I think they proved that, right?

**I should explain to the audience … that's exactly what I said when I was eleven. And they were totally cool with it. So, you've completed your degree, you're resting up for a few months, and then it's off to your first official Stark Industries job, in …**

In Kenya. Well, just off the coast – barring unforeseen circumstances, I'll be spending the next six months at Stark Aerospace's Launch Facility 1 near Malindi, learning how the whole operation there works and how it fits into the system. And helping with the expansion of the launch site to accommodate the new vehicles we're bringing online next year.

**Space does seem to be the big push right now at Stark Industries. Especially with Launch Facility 2 off the Brazilian coast up and running, and number 3 under construction near … um …**

_Kiribati._

**I never remember how to pronounce it.**

It makes sense – space may not be the final frontier, but it's the obvious next frontier. All those resources up there – solar energy, minerals, chemicals, water – and you don't have to worry about destroying the environment. You just have to worry about getting there to access them. Which is where Kobold comes in, which in turn is why we're expanding Launch Facility 1 …

_You aren't giving away any company secrets by talking about Kobold, are you?_

Worrywart. Nah, it's pretty much public knowledge.

**For those of our listeners who don't know, what is Kobold?**

Kobold is Stark Aerospace's upcoming … well, mining project, really. We'll set up an ore-processing station in orbit around the Earth, which in turn sends unmanned probes into the asteroid belt. The probes latch onto small asteroids – and by small, I mean, under a quarter-mile across - tow them back to the ore-processing station, where they're mined for anything useful – iron, nickel, carbonaceous chondrite, whatever. Those are in turn sent to factories on Earth – eventually, it'll be factories in orbit – and the tailings are sent with another unmanned vessel to dump them elsewhere. Probably on the far side of the Moon, though we're still negotiating that. It's a pretty ambitious project, but the payoffs are huge. Imagine never having to mine for inorganics on Earth ever again! Think of how much land would be allowed to heal …

**Indeed. Now is this concurrent with the Phosphor project, the orbiting solar panel farm?**

Partly. The hope is that Phosphor will be in place and producing by the end of this year – that it'll be supplying fully-charged arc reactors to, among other things, the launch facilities and the construction crews for the processing station. Kobold Station should be fully operational within four years. The goal is 40 months, but you know how these things go.

**Any further controversy surrounding either project?**

Not that I've heard. The company's doing everything possible to assure that nobody will have an asteroid or satellite falling into their neighborhood, and I think most people who know about it realize that. There are a few … Chicken Littles, I guess you could say, but there always are. The likelihood of a disaster of that kind is pretty close to zero, and we're doing everything we can to make sure of that.

**Well, I feel better. A.Y., have you made any contributions to these projects?**

_Officially, no … but Dad and I talk about it from time to time, and I've suggested a few things. Don't really know how many he's used, but he did say he probably owed me a bonus check down the line._

**Maybe he can put it toward your tuition.**

Yeah, that's right – you guys are headed off to college in a couple of months! How's that going?

**Pretty well, I think. As my listeners know, in August I take off for Stanford University –**

_Mater's alma mater, so to speak._

– **to start studying pre-law. Off sort-of on my own – a few hundred miles away, anyway. Meanwhile, A.Y. will be staying in the nest and commuting to ****UCLA.**

_Mater's _other _alma mater._

I've been meaning to ask, A.Y., what happened to Cal Tech? I thought it was your first choice.

_Well, it was, but then I got thinking about how my spine is held together by a first-generation piece of technology. So I wanted to stay close to UCLA-Reagan Med Center, since that's where they did the procedure and where I have my checkups. And Mom was getting all nervy about having no kids at home, but Cal Tech requires all freshmen to live on campus. I guess I could've gotten a medical waiver, but I figured why sweat it. Besides – UCLA, birthplace of the Internet, cabrones!_

**And a much easier commute for you on that little scooter of yours.**

_It's not a scooter! The Stark S5 is a demi-motorcycle!_

**It's a scooter, dude.**

_Said the teenage girl who drives a minivan._

**It's Mom's old Centurion – what's your beef?**

Okay, guys, okay – both your vehicles are pretty. Let's calm down.

**See, folks? Toldja – she's the mature one.**

Someone has to be. And I'm glad you drive a sc … motorcycle, A.Y. If your legs went out while operating a car …

_Exactly. I mean, I've only had, like, four sputters with the thing in ten years – but why take the chance? One happens while I'm on the 'cycle, I can use my hands to pull over and stop, hit the switch to put the kickstand down, I'm good. Safety first._

"**Safety first" - no wonder Dad talks about you being in Quality Control someday.**

_I'd still rather do research and development. QC is all right, it's necessary, but R&D's where the action is._

Valid point. Think I should get a motorcycle for when I'm in Kenya? Maybe one of the bigger ones, an S14?

**That still locos me, that you don't have a vehicle of your own.**

I didn't need one – around D.C. I always took the Metro or rode with friends. When I'd come home, I'd just hang out here. And at the start of the school year or the end, I'd rent a U-Haul …

**The U-Haul – that's a good segue to talk about your latest trip home! You and –**

No. No, you are not doing this.

– **and Philip Reynolds!**

_ENSIGN Philip Reynolds!_

I can't believe you're doing this to me … I should just … I should just walk out. I really should.

**Oh, come on – brag to the world about your beau!**

All right, all right – but you owe me one, Miss Podcaster!

_Okay, let's get all the juicy …_

Cerrado. You want to hear this or not?

**The public demands it.**

Don't oversell your position, Annie. Okay … two years ago, I'm wrapping up my third year at UM, preparing to come back to L.A. and rest up for my fall internship at Goddard Space Flight Center. I've just finished my last final when Dad calls, wondering if I'd be willing to stay on the East Coast for two more weeks and help out with an SI project. I ask him que pasa. Turns out it's a software security deal that SI is working on at NavCyberFor – sorry, the U.S. Navy's Fleet Electronic Warfare Center – in Virginia Beach. I think, hmmm, this'll probably look good on my CV, but I'm really tired. Then he said I'd be paid consultant's wages for the work. And I said –

"_Where do I sign?"_

More or less. My first day there, I'm being a happy cog in the office machine, reviewing code until my eyes cross, and one of my Stark Industries supervisors comes over and invites me to meet the Navy folks that are working on the same project. I follow him into the conference room, and out of the corner of my eye I think I see someone I know, and I turn too fast in a new pair of heels … and I go down in a heap. Sprained ankle.

**You're so smooth.**

Eh. Worse still, it wasn't anyone I knew – I'd just pratfalled in a roomful of strangers. Well, they rush me to the infirmary, give me a couple of injections in the ankle to speed recovery, wrap it up tight and promptly forget I'm there because some senator on the Armed Services Committee wants a tour Right Now. So the only person around me for the next hour or two is a midshipman first class, a Navy engineer-in-training who'd broken his thumb. Philip Reynolds.

_That is what the Hollywood folks call a meet-cute._

Don't interrupt. Turns out he's a latest-generation as well, only in the service rather than a private corporation – his great-great-grandfather was on Admiral Dewey's flagship when it reached Manila in the Spanish-American War, and every able male since had joined the Navy. Mostly, though, I noticed that he was bright, funny, good to talk to, had enough breeding to not be obvious about looking at my chest –

**That's something in a man, isn't it?**

Yes – and filled out a uniform rather nicely himself. So a pleasant conversation was had, and somewhere in the middle of it I offhandedly mentioned that my bum ankle would probably ruin my plans for my eighteenth birthday the next day. Which was a half-truth; I didn't actually have plans. A good thing too – the next morning he hunted me down at my desk to invite me to dinner that evening. Since then, we've talked almost every day, even when I was in D.C. or College Park and he was back in Annapolis or out here – he's stationed at the Naval Construction Battalion Center in Port Hueneme. And he took a week's leave last month to fly out to Maryland, and help me pack and drive home. Improve upon that.

**I can't. So … is any ring in the offing?**

We haven't even brought it up, but … he does say he has plans once he makes lieutenant. And when I once asked him if he'd be uncomfortable married to a big-time executive, he said it would probably be a good thing, as he knew how hard it was to support a family on a Navy salary …

"_Support a family," huh? That does sound like he has plans._

**And worth adding – Dad likes the idea of you being with a serviceman. I've overheard him and Mom talking.**

_Eavesdropping – very nice._

It's okay – Dad's told me the same thing. And that he likes Philip as a person too. Philip didn't have to work too hard to do it, I suspect – he's very much the "Southern gentleman."

**Ah – so you didn't have to throw him out any windows?**

(Laughs) You want me to tell this story too?

**Could you? Because for me, it NEVER gets old!**

All right. Short version – a few weeks into my sophomore year at UM, this senior football player decides I'm to be his next conquest. I tell him I'm not interested, and I'm only sixteen besides. He doesn't take the hint. I tell him to get lost, only not that nicely. Still doesn't register. I try to avoid him as best I can. He decides to show up at my dorm one night, well fortified with liquid courage, and turn on the charm – and when that doesn't work, switches to using force. But he makes three mistakes, in addition to all the others I've mentioned. One is not realizing that I have a black belt in Wing Chun Kung Fu. Another is attempting to detain me while in front of a large OPEN third-story window at the end of the hallway – since that day the central air in the dorm had gone down, and they'd opened the windows because Maryland in the late summer is unbearable without some airflow. And finally, he'd made enough noise – and caused me to make enough noise – that it attracted a witness, who not only saw enough to corroborate my story, but was already on his cell phone calling Campus Police when I managed to flip my attempted rapist out the window.

**And the upshot? Which unfortunately included no broken bones?**

Yeah, pity there was a hedge below that window. Or not, because he still hadn't extricated himself from it when the campus cops pulled up. Between my testimony, the other witness's testimony, and the bruises the oaf left on both upper arms and one boob, there was enough to not only get him arrested and charged, but – once Dad called the administration – cost the jerk his scholarship. He's probably pumping gas somewhere in East Bumcleavage and complaining how bitch done him wrong, but I'm willing to live with that.

**And that, in short, is why I'm learning aikido. Girls, it never hurts to be prepared.**

And why Mom was so disappointed at your behavior at sixteen, Annie.

_Ooooooooh …_

**You did not just go there, Jamey.**

_She did, she did!_

Mm-hmm. In fact, remember when I said you owed me one? That's the one. Pay up.

**NO! No, no, I am not going to –**

_You tell it or we tell it. Besides, it's kind of public knowledge already – you've told people at school yourself, and so has David._

**Well … yeah. But how did YOU hear about it, Jamey?**

Mom. She needed someone to vent to – she was totally quesoed at you, and Dad was too cool about it. "Your sister …!"

**Bet you were cool about it too.**

Once I stopped laughing. So who's telling this story, you or us?

**I can't believe I'm doing this on my own podcast … aw, screw it –**

_Which is pretty much how the story begins._

**I said I'd tell it! Well, this story features the Official Boyfriend of the Podcast, the chubbily handsome David Dreiberg, and took place last October. David and I had been … active together for some time –**

"Active together"? When I was in high school, the term in vogue was "doing the nasty."

**High school's gotten classier in the last five years. That day, neither of us had any homework, so we decided to come back here and have a little fun. Which would've been fine, except that as we're in the living room preparing for the activity, Mom – who had a splitting headache, and had decided to cut the workday short – came home and saw us.**

_She didn't handle it well. Later, she admitted as much._

**Next thing I know, she's on the phone, screaming at Dad to come home that instant and talk to "your daughter." Apparently I'd been disowned. Meanwhile, we're shrugging clothes back on, having been ordered not to leave the room – and when your mom is calling Iron Man to come sort things out, believe me, you obey orders.**

And he came home, and settled everything in five minutes.

**More like ten. But he was ridiculously rational about it all. After shaking his head at me and saying "not swift, Anne Marie" – with which I could only agree – he just started asking questions. How long had we been active together – a few months. Were there any previous partners to worry about – none for either of us. Was he using protection – he was, though I got the implant at fourteen just like you did, Jamey. How serious was the relationship – very.**

_He's going to Stanford too – electrical engineering major._

**Then he told us the main problem was that we had chosen a common area, which not only didn't ensure us privacy but which didn't show respect for the other people who lived there. He asked what would've happened if he had brought a client or a friend home for a meeting –**

Ouch!

**You think? So we had to apologize to Mom for the lack of respect. We had to promise that if we were going to have sex, it be behind closed doors away from where people could walk in. And David had to tell his parents what happened within 48 hours, because Dad was going to talk to his dad about it and make sure there wouldn't be any conflicts.**

David's dad is …?

_Wally Dreiberg. He works at Stark Industries, in R&D. Nice guy._

Oh, I know him! How'd he take it?

**Okay, I guess. David got grounded for a week for – this is David quoting his mom – "making a fool of himself." But that was that. As long as we kept our business to ourselves, no problems.**

That's one of the great things about Dad – and Mom too, to a lesser extent. Once they've got their game plan in place, it's pretty much impossible to throw them off it. It's nice to have that kind of stability from your parents. I hear stories from my friends whose parents are divorced or cheating or just plain nutty, and I realize how good we have it.

**Verdad.**

So what kind of trouble have you gotten in, A.Y.?

_None so far._

**To have girlfriend trouble, you have to have a girlfriend first.**

_I'm in no rush. It'll happen when it happens. Besides, Happy promised me that before the school year begins, he'd take me around Westwood and show me where the hottest chicas chill out._

Happy Hogan is Dad's age – he's like a senior citizen! Is he still chasing after college girls?

_I think he mostly chases after the female professors now. But … he joked that no matter how old he gets, the coeds stay the same age. Still, I think he mostly just watches …_

**Ewww!**

Well, I guess if he can, he can. But in general, yeah, ewww.

_Maybe we should wrap this up before we sink further into the gutter._

Actually, I do have to jet. Dad wants me to come down to the basement so JARVIS can measure me for my suit.

**You're getting a suit? Wow!**

_You going to be fighting you some crime?_

Dad's talked about bringing me on a mission or two. We'll see how it goes. Who knows, maybe I'll just take the suit to Kenya and not worry about a motorcycle …

**Lucky – when do I get a suit?**

What he told me was when I finished school.

_That means you'll be the last of us, Annie – you'll have to finish law school first. That's an extra couple of years!_

**Oh, life is so unfair!**

You didn't know that? Catch up, chica!

**Yeah, yeah. And on that happy note, we conclude this episode of "The First Draft of History." I'm your really jealous host, Anne Marie Stark –**

She'll get over it, folks. Don't worry.

**Don't assume that, Jamey. But I will be back next week with another podcast, featuring who knows who. In the meantime, goodbye, and have a great future!**


	17. 26 June 2040: The Last Board Meeting

Vignette #17

26 June 2040 – The Last Board Meeting

_(Author's note: and now, the end is near … and so I face the final curtain …_

_… Seriously, this is the last Vignette, and probably my last Iron Man piece for a while, short of maybe filling in some earlier gaps. Hope you've enjoyed them all. But fear not – I've got ideas for other stories based on other properties:_ Firefly/Serenity_, _Enchanted_, _V for Vendetta_, _Up_, even _Juno_. I think you'll like them too._

_In short, you haven't seen the last of me. And if _Avengers_ and _Iron Man 3_ are even half as good as I've been hearing they'll be, you haven't seen the last of me and Tony, either …)_

* * *

><p>Pepper was waiting for Tony when he came out of the board room. She looked up at him expectantly.<p>

Tony nodded. "That's that."

"It's done?"

He sat down beside her. "It's done," he replied quietly.

Pepper put an arm around his shoulders and kissed him on the cheek. "Are you doing all right?"

"I … I think so. It's just … strange."

"I bet." Then, after a pause: "Wanna talk about it?"

"No, I just need some … time to think."

"That makes sense." Tony settled back in his chair, and Pepper pulled closer, resting her head on his shoulder.

And Tony thought. It was strange – after fifty-four years (was it that long? Yes … yes, it was), he would no longer be the head of Stark Industries. In that time, he'd gone from brash kid genius to superhero, pioneering executive, family man, and now grandfather. Stark Industries had gone from being a Fortune 500 company, one of the leaders in weapons manufacturing, to the largest corporation in the world, THE leader in power supply and several specialty electronics fields, and basically creating the off-planet resource industry.

But that time was now over. At 75, he was now publicly, officially, and for the most part irrevocably … _retired_.

He shivered at the thought. "Retired" – what did that even mean? Unless you counted a few periods of running away from his responsibilities, he'd been working full-time since his parents died … what, fifty-seven years before?

And yet, deep down, he knew it was what he'd had to do. The signs had been coming for years. Since '35, anyway. That was the year Pepper had had her heart attack – her second one, really – and decided to cash in and take early retirement at 62. (Retirement from SI, at least – she still chaired the board of Iron Man, Inc., the organization that handled all licensing of Iron Man-related merchandise and distributed its profits to charity, Newman's Own style.)

That was the first warning shot across the bow. Then came the broken leg while doing some Iron Man work in Xinjiang three years ago, which made up his mind to leave the derring-do to the younger generation (Jamey, A.Y., Natalie/Natasha) and the semi-immortal generation (Thor, Steve Rogers). And he'd been more tired and distracted lately, and there had been hints from the board of directors …

Finally, and only after a long discussion with Jamey, he'd decided to face the music and dance. On his 75th birthday in April, Tony had hosted a special meeting of the board and announced that he would step aside at the end of the fiscal year in June. The rest of the session had been devoted to setting up a smooth transition.

Not that there was any doubt as to who would be the next CEO. Jamey Stark Reynolds, though only 29 (28 at the time of the announcement) was as smart as her father, and far more prepared to take the corporate reigns than he had been. Tony, after all, had been thrust into the top spot by his parents' death, followed by a short regency under Obadiah Stane, and had taken over at 21. Jamey, in contrast, had been groomed for the role since she was a pre-teen, had worked in the aerospace, transportation and consumer electronics divisions, and had been on the board for five years (taking Pepper's place, as well as her title of vice-president for special projects and her role of keeping Tony pointed toward the goal line). Even those who objected to her youth couldn't argue with her intelligence, or her experience.

The doubters had been able to wring one concession out of the Starks – for the next three years, Jamey would be CEO, but not chairman of the board. That role would go to Ulrich Kemp, SI's longtime COO – but there wasn't much to object to with that decision. Kemp was honest, forthright, supportive of Stark Industries' mission, and had chaired meetings before when Tony was out of town or letting his leg heal. Besides, he was no spring chicken either: 67 and planning to retire at 70. He'd be the last man of the old generation at SI.

The old generation … yeah, that described Tony and his circle pretty well at this point. He sighed, thinking about them. Happy Hogan was now living in a retirement community in Mission Viejo, his girl-chasing now confined to the nursing staff. Bill Riva, the longtime head of research and development, had retired a while back and was living out his remaining years on Guam. Phil Coulson – the same, only in Vermont. Natali – sorry, _Natasha_ Bryan – was running S.H.I.E.L.D., and a new grandmother besides.

And some of the group hadn't just gotten old; they'd gotten dead. Nick Fury lived to be 87 and stayed cantankerous to the end. Dr. Christopher Walling – Prometheus, ever the wild card – had passed away quietly, surrounded by his wife Martha and their kids in Mumbai. Bruce Banner, his dark hair long gone white, had taken a trip to the Canadian Rockies years ago and never returned. Clint Barton … he'd never found out the details, but it involved some kind of skirmish during the Arabian Unification War. And Rhodey …

Tony sighed again. Pepper sat up straight and looked at his face. "Rhodey?"

"How'd you know?"

"Your 'Rhodey sigh' is distinctive." She said it without a smile.

Tony nodded his head. He'd never thought about Rhodey growing old – never thought that Rhodey _could_ grow old, any more than he could. And then last year, he'd gotten the call from Adele: a massive stroke. Gone before he knew what hit him. He wondered how much of his decision to step down at SI could be traced back to his old friend's departure. "It still seems weird. I keep wanting to call him, tell him I'm gonna have free time and does he want to get together … you hear from Adele lately?"

"It's been a couple of months. I should write her." Adele Carey-Rhodes had moved back to England after her husband's death, and was serving as a spokesperson for British war veterans' medical needs, a role at which she was particularly adept.

But that's the way it's always been, Tony mused – one generation dies off, the next takes its place. He was leaving, but Jamey was there to take over. When Rhodey retired, Jamey's husband, now-Lieutenant Commander Philip Reynolds, USN, was the logical choice to be Pentagon liaison with SI. Bill Riva was replaced by Wally Dreiberg, who would eventually (soon, if Jamey had anything to say about it) become chief technical officer and let Anthony Yensin Stark take charge of R&D. And so on.

Tony smiled at that – Jamey running the store while A.Y. tinkered in the lab, just the way they'd always figured it. And Anne Marie … "well, there's one way I can keep busy."

"Hmmm?"

"Hit the campaign trail for Anne Marie." After finishing her law degree at Stanford, Anne Marie Stark Dreiberg (though she still went by her maiden name professionally) had gotten a job in constituent relations for one of the more prominent conservative Congressmen in southern California. Now, she was – at 26 – the Republican candidate for the House of Representatives in a district that leaned Democrat but whose incumbent was retiring; the seat was regarded by most pundits as wide-open. She was running as a moderate, pro-reform and anti-deficit, and was holding her own in the polls against the Democratic, United People's Movement and Tea Party candidates, but she certainly wouldn't mind Dad's help.

"She'd like that. In fact, she told me she was thinking of asking you, but didn't want to do it until …" Pepper made a vague gesture toward the conference room door.

"Really? Huh. Good of her to wait …"

"I thought so. Almost makes me think we raised them right."

Tony shook his head. When it came to parenting, Pepper was her own worst critic – in fact, probably her only critic. "I know we raised them right – you especially. And now they're proving it. All intelligent, working hard, Jamey and Anne Marie happily married …"

"And the girl A.Y. is dating seems nice."

"She does. In a wallflowery sort of way."

"Well, that's his type." She paused before continuing. "You don't mind that David's working for P&G now?"

"No. In a way it's kind of necessary for him and Anne Marie – she can avoid some of the conflict-of-interest questions, and he's in a place where he can move up the ladder. I mean, here he'd be stuck." David Dreiberg – Wally's son, and now Tony's son-in-law – got his electrical engineering degree to work on arc reactors, a field that Stark Industries had, over the last few years, been forced to de-emphasize.

In a way, Stark Industries had become a victim of its own success. By making arc reactors (and the charging of them) plentiful, reliable and relatively inexpensive, they'd revolutionized hundreds of industries, wiped out several, and become the #1 company in the world. Arc reactors now ran pretty much everything from rocket boosters to children's toys, and no family home these days was built without one, not even in the poorest towns in the world.

The blue glow of arc reactors had lit massive changes worldwide. Reducing the price for electrical power while increasing convenience, they'd electrified towns in developing nations in unheard-of time, allowing them easier access to the world's resources and knowledge. Decreasing the need for petroleum, they'd led to oil-funded dictatorships collapsing in Asia, Africa and Latin America. Eliminating messy methods of power transfer, they'd made power lines obsolete and freed up huge amounts of copper and other materials. Charged as they were by solar power, they'd allowed a quantum leap in air and water purity worldwide. And being far less massive than traditional propellants, they'd opened the door to space wider than ever before.

But Stark Industries was the only company that was making arc reactors, because it controlled all the key patents, and would through 2036 (or in a few cases, 2038). Faced with the power (not just electrical but political) SI could potentially wield, the U.S., EU and Chinese governments were all preparing antitrust cases should those patents be renewed. Needless to say, there were a lot of discussions at SI about what to do – a loss in such a suit could potentially destroy the company.

Interestingly, it was Jamey, only 24 and brand-new to the board of directors, who cut through the Gordian knot of legal tangles and came up with a solution. Simply don't renew the 2036-expiring patents, and petition the investigating governments to void the 2038-expiring ones when the earlier ones ended. Let any company that wants to build the darn things build them. It would mean competition, and SI would no longer be able to rely on them as its core business. But it would keep the company together, and since it would take years for potential competitors to ramp up production, Stark Industries would have time to adjust and put its money into other, suddenly more profitable fields – while at the same time banking goodwill with the bureaucratic Powers That Be.

And that's what they did. They took a temporary hit in their stock price, but recovered thanks to their diversity and the time it took for other companies to get their wheels under them. One of the fastest to jump in, though, was Procter & Gamble, whose Duracell division had been almost wiped out by arc reactors. (Smaller arc reactors did a better job than batteries in most cases, and weren't filled with nasty acids that would leak into landfills for decades – in fact, since 2021 SI hadn't produced an arc reactor that wasn't 100% recyclable.) P&G had gotten a leg up by utilizing their own resources to snag a few experts away from Stark Industries' shrinking arc-reactor section, as well as recruiting hotshot college grads like David Dreiberg. So while it made for some tension at the Dreiberg house on Thanksgiving, Tony figured that even Wally would agree it was the best career move for his son.

Meanwhile, back at Stark Industries, the company's focus – which under Tony's leadership had swung from weapons to power supply – swung again, this time to space. Not that it hadn't been headed there already, but now the efforts were redoubled. The Kobold project – towing small asteroids into Earth orbit for convenient mining – was already bearing fruit. Cheap arc-reactor-based power meant many more launches, and SI's reusable launch vehicles kept the price down for both the company and others who contracted with them. In 2039, they'd put more payload into orbit than the U.S., Russian, Chinese and Indian governments together. Next year, they'd be putting a base and a team of prospectors on the Moon, and they were working on sending another group to Mars – though that was still in the planning stages …

… but while he had no doubt he'd be called in to consult on occasion, the main responsibility for this and so many other projects would fall to his kids. It was their time now. And that was okay – they could handle it, he was sure.

Abruptly, Tony stood up and took Pepper's hand. "C'mon, let's go."

Pepper rose, puzzled. "But … Jamey will probably want to talk to you after the meeting's done …"

Tony smirked. "She can call me. But they don't need us old fogeys hanging around. Let's blow this dump – we've got retirements to enjoy."

As they drove home – well, floated home, as Tony's latest ride was a Stark Trovato hovercraft – Stark Automotive's latest (and fairly popular) upsetting of the personal-vehicle-market applecart – an idea began forming in his mind. When they got there, he shared it with Pepper, largely expecting her to shoot it down from several directions.

Instead, she thought about it for a couple of seconds, then replied, "I'll have to make some calls. And pack. How about after dinner?"

"You sure?"

"No, I said that just to mess with you. Of course I'm sure, Tony – it sounds great. Let's do it!"

"Okay, then!"

They spent the rest of the afternoon getting ready, had a light dinner, then headed down to the basement and suited up. Everything they'd need was already stowed in two aerodynamically-shaped cases – variations on the observation module Tony had first built thirty years ago. Some technologies didn't change much, he thought with a smile; a box is still a box.

Within a few minutes, they were ready to go. "Just thought of something," Tony said before lowering his mask. "Your cardiologist …"

"Isn't thrilled with it, but doesn't figure there's an immediate risk as long as I don't miss a treatment. Don't worry about it, okay?"

"Well, if _you're_ telling _me_ not to worry, then it really is okay," Tony said with a wink, and Pepper laughed. "Kaua'i, here we come."

"And in a few days, when we get bored, Kiribati, then Guam to drop in on Bill Riva. And then …?"

Tony shrugged. "Singapore? Shanghai? Tokyo? We've got options."

"And all the time in the world," Pepper added with a grin. "Let's go."

* * *

><p>The sun was beginning to close on the water as two figures emerged from a cliffside mansion overlooking the Pacific Ocean outside of Malibu. Both were in metallic bodysuits with matching cases connected to their backs; the larger one was red and gold, the smaller pink and silver. Reaching the cliff's edge, they turned their heads to look at each other, nodded, then faced the ocean, their hands slightly apart from their bodies, palms turned down.<p>

Fire erupted from their hands and the soles of their feet as they slowly rose into the air. The lights on the center of the suits' chests glowed slightly brighter as the ascended into the clear California sky. On the nearby highway, a small vehicle – a Chrysler Primavera, powered by a Stark Industries arc reactor – pulled over as its driver watched the figures rise.

In unison, the two suits turned from vertical to horizontal, then began rapidly picking up speed, heading west. A few seconds later, a double sonic boom sounded over the water, and quickly they disappeared into the sunset …


End file.
